Wintail
Wintail is a small program I wrote after struggling to view log files as they were being updated using
Windows Notepad. I missed using 'tail -f' in UNIX and since there was no program like it in Windows,
I wrote my own. It is much more useful than even the UNIX tail -f because you can have several
tiled windows open at once, and you can pause updates while looking closely at the file (so important
pieces of information do not whiz by).
Version history:
1.14
- Added support for user configuration of a text editor for viewing tailed files. Used to be hardcoded
to use Notepad.exe. Now use View->Set Editor... to change the default editor to something else.
1.13
- UNIX linefeeds are now supported (sort of). What happens is Wintail will search the file for the presence of linefeeds but the absence of carriage returns. If
this is the case (there are linefeeds, but NO carriage returns), it assumes it is a UNIX text file and then prefixes each LF with a CR. This might make things run a little slower due
to the extra check, and this has not been extensively tested. Let me know if you have any problems.
1.12
- Added word wrapping support. This parameter is saved in the registry on exit for next time.
1.11
- Added support for multiple files on the command line. All files on command line are now
opened and tiled at startup. For paths with spaces, use double quotation marks such as:
wintail.exe c:\temp.txt "c:\program files\test2.txt"
This is very handy when you need to monitor the same files frequently -- just create a shortcut
and use the format above on the command line.
1.10.1
- File handles are now properly closed. File may even be deleted or moved while you are tailing.
1.10
- Added support for large files.
- Added full file path to title bar to make clearer when looking at two identical filenames in
different directories
Email Andy Hofle