ANNOTATE-OUTPUT(1) - man - phpMan

ANNOTATE-OUTPUT(1)                     General Commands Manual                    ANNOTATE-OUTPUT(1)



NAME
       annotate-output - annotate program output with time and stream

SYNOPSIS
       annotate-output [options] program [args ...]

DESCRIPTION
       annotate-output will execute the specified program, while prepending every line with the cur‐
       rent time and O for stdout and E for stderr.


OPTIONS
       +FORMAT
              Controls the timestamp format, as per date(1).  Defaults to "%H:%M:%S".

       -h, --help
              Display a help message and exit successfully.


EXAMPLE
       $ annotate-output make
       21:41:21 I: Started make
       21:41:21 O: gcc -Wall program.c
       21:43:18 E: program.c: Couldn't compile, and took me ages to find out
       21:43:19 E: collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
       21:43:19 E: make: *** [all] Error 1
       21:43:19 I: Finished with exitcode 2


BUGS
       Since stdout and stderr are processed in parallel, it can happen that some lines received  on
       stdout will show up before later-printed stderr lines (and vice-versa).

       This is unfortunately very hard to fix with the current annotation strategy.  A fix would in‐
       volve switching to PTRACE'ing the process.  Giving nice a (much) higher priority over the ex‐
       ecuted program could however cause this behaviour to show up less frequently.

       The  program  does  not work as well when the output is not linewise.  In particular, when an
       interactive program asks for input, the question might not be shown until after you have  an‐
       swered  it.   This will give the impression that the annotated program has hung, while it has
       not.


SEE ALSO
       date(1)


SUPPORT
       This program is community-supported (meaning: you'll need to fix it yourself).   Patches  are
       however appreciated, as is any feedback (positive or negative).


AUTHOR
       annotate-output  was  written  by  Jeroen van Wolffelaar <jeroen AT wolffelaar.nl>. This manpage
       comes under the same copyright as annotate-output itself, read  /usr/bin/annotate-output  (or
       wherever you install it) for the details.



DEBIAN                                    Debian Utilities                        ANNOTATE-OUTPUT(1)