TailSharp A document / file monitoring solution based on the idea of the Unix 'tail' command
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check checker monitor Unix command Process Monitor file monitor Unix RM command document monitor

TailSharp Description

The TailSharp application was developed to be 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. 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 100 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.

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