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24 lines
1.2 KiB
Markdown
24 lines
1.2 KiB
Markdown
---
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layout: post
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title: "Competing with 'tail -f'"
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date: 2013-09-10 00:00:00
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excerpt: The standard utilities are tough competition.
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---
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Probably the toughest competition for lnav is the standard Unix utilities like
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tail, grep, less, and emacs/vim. It can be hard trying to convince people that
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these built-in commands that they've used for forever can be improved upon. The
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advanced features of lnav might even work against it since folks are expecting
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to have to learn a bunch of stuff to see any benefits.
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The reality is that there are quite a few "passive" features in lnav that can
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provide value with no effort required by the user. For example, lnav can easily
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replace 'tail -f', it's even shorter to type! Beyond the basic task of
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displaying new lines appended to a log file, you also get to see log messages
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from multiple files interleaved, the ability to scroll backwards, syntax
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highlighting, live searching, and so on. These basic features do not have the
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same "wow" factor as executing a SQL query over data automatically extracted
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from a log file, but they're the features that get used 90% of the time.
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Anyways, I think I'm gaining a new appreciation for marketing/sales...
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