This is the Tail Sharp Read Me.
Please choose one of the following topics:
TailSharp is a document / file monitoring solution based on the idea of
the Unix 'tail' command. The Unix 'tail' command allows the user to
display the 'tail' - the last lines - of a text file. This is useful in
case one wants to monitor the activity of processes that write log files.
(Like server processes etc.)
There exist several other 'tail' like tools for Windows an Unix systems
but none of the tools I checked out coped with my needs.
I need a tool that is able to monitor large files. I want a tool that
has search and highlight capabilities. I want a tool that is able to
monitor many different files at once with an intuitive user interface.
The only way to get a tool that fulfills all my needs seemed to write
that tool on my own.
TailSharp is written in C# using the Microsoft Visual Studio.
That's where the name comes from. C# = C-Sharp.
To open a file you can:
- Use the file open command from inside TailSharp (menu or toolbar)
- Pass the files you wish to open via command line
- Drag&Drop the files onto a running TailSharp instance
After the file(s) are opened TailSharp will automatically start to
monitor the files. To stop the document monitor you may either click into
the document view, press the Stop toolbar button or press Shift+F5. To
resume the document monitor press F5 or click the Play button. If you
want to manually refresh the file you may press the Refresh button or Ctrl+R.
TailSharp will, depending on its setup display only the last bytes of a
file to increase the performance. If you wish to clear the file view
manually you can press the clear toolbar button or press Ctrl+Del key on
the keyboard.
TailSharp has a search functionality as you may know it from your webbrowser.
By pressing Ctrl+F the input focus is moved to the search field in the toolbar.
Just enter the search phrase and press the enter key. TailSharp will automatically
highlight the next occurance of the search pharase. To continue
searching press F3, to search in the other direction press Shift+F3.
Before doing a search you should pause the document monitor as TailSharp
will scroll to the bottom of the file when a change happens.
A Highlighter is a search that automatically highlights (colors) all
matches in the visible area of the document. To add a highlighter type the
search prase into the search box, press the drop down search button and
select "Highlight all matches" from the menu. TailSharp will then prompt
you for a color. Select one and press OK. Please note that TailSharp does
not invert the text color, so picking "black" might be a bad idea as you
won't be able to read black text on a black background.
To remove a highlighter select it from the search fields drop down box,
press the drop down search button and select "Remove highlighter".
You will be prompted if you want to remove just the highlighter
(future matches won't be colored) or if you want to remove all current
colors.
Tail sharp is able to monitor file changes in real time.
As I cannot imagine any real use for this, the file monitoring is in cached
mode by default. In the case you need real time monitoring you can turn
it on using the options dialog box.
In real time mode every change in the file will be directly displayed.
If a file changes too frequently this will cause a high CPU usage and
might render TailSharp unusable forcing you to kill it's process.
In cached mode TailSharp will accumulate the changes of the last
150 (default) milliseconds. You can modify this value using the options
dialog box. In cached mode the text will scroll smoother and the CPU
usage will be very low.
The Unix 'tail' command only displays the 'tail' of a file.
As a result the memory footprint is very small and the performance is high.
For the same reason
TailSharp by default only displays the last 25 KiBytes (default value) of a file.
Displaying the complete file is possible but not recommanded as this will
make TailSharp consume a lot of memory if you work with large files and
will also slow down operations like opening the file, applying highlighters
and doing searches. To toggle the display mode open the options dialog box.
TailSharp is written in C# and requires the .NET Runtime Framework (4.6 or newer)
for Windows or the
MONO
Runtime Framework for GNU/Linux and MacOS X.