/ 
App-Prefix-0.18
River stage zero No dependents
/ prefix

NAME

prefix - adds hostname, time information, or more to lines from stdin (or read from files)

SYNOPSIS

% tail -f /var/log/some.log | prefix -host -timestamp

tails a file, showing each line with a hostname and a timestamp like. So if we were tailing a growing file with lines like:

OK: System operational
Warning: Disk bandwidth saturated

we would get real-time output like:

host.example.com 2013-10-13 16:51:26 OK: System operational
host.example.com 2013-10-13 16:55:47 Warning: Disk bandwidth saturated
host.example.com 2013-10-13 16:55:49 Warning: Things are wonky: disks spinning backwards
host.example.com 2013-10-13 16:55:50 Error: Data read wackbards
host.example.com 2013-10-13 16:56:10 OK: Spacetime reversal complete

Note that the hostname (host.example.com) and the date have been prepended to the lines from the file

The prefix program also supports adding arbitrary text, current time to the microsecond, time elapsed since invocation, time since last line output, adding text at the end instead of the beginning of the line, and more.

DESCRIPTION

A text filter that prepends (or appends) data to lines read from stdin or named files, and echos them to stdout

OPTIONS

--text='arbitrary text here'

add any particular string you like. For example

% ./some_program | prefix -text="TestRun17:" -utime > logfile.txt

The above example would prefix each line output from some_program with the time and the text 'TestRun17:' (without the quotes).

--timestamp

Add a timestamp to each line

% ls -l | prefix -timestamp

--utimestamp

Add a timestamp, showing fractions of a second to each line

Example:

% ls -l | prefix -utimestamp

--hoststamp

Add the hostname to each line

--no-space

Don't put a space between the original line read and the data added to each line

--suffix

Show all added data at end of line, not start of line

For example:

% echo "abc" | prefix -suffix -text=:Run17:

will output

abc :Run17:

(note how the added text is now at the end of the line) whereas:

% echo "abc" | prefix -text=:Run17:

would output

:Run17: abc

--elapsedstamp

Add the time since the prefix program was started to each line

--diffstamp

Add time elapsed since last line seen. Shows fractional time.

This can be useful when tailing logfiles or output of programs and you want to see which lines take longer or shorter to output.

--raw

Show --elapsedstamp and --diffstamp times in seconds, and never in other units (like minutes or microseconds, for example)

--quote

Show each original line read in single quotes

AUTHOR

Josh Rabinowitz <joshr>