Re: tail --recursive

[Simon Windows]

Jim Meyering wrote:
>>> I haven't looked at it at all yet,
>>> but wonder if you've considered using inotify?
>>> That seems like that mechanism would be much more appropriate,
>>> when tailing many files in an arbitrary hierarchy.

I have looked at the inotify library as you suggested. I agree it would
be a useful tool to use in tail as it removes the need to poll files and
would make a recursive version much more efficient. I can also see there
has been some discussion of using inotify in coreutils for this purpose.

I think that issue is orthogonal to the recursive option I am proposing.

I'd like the current version of tail to handle directories and follow
them in a sensible fashion. None of the inotify programs solve this
problem unless you use them initiate a new tail process for each new file.

If you're willing to consider a recursive option I will be more than
happy to develop it further to make it robust and help with testing.