Re: why doesn't "tail -f" use select or poll?

[Paul Eggert]

Joshua Haberman <address@hidden> writes:

> Is there any reason why "tail -f" doesn't use select or poll, instead
> of sleep?

Mostly inertia, I'd guess.  The whole area used to be a portability
minefield.

These days programs should use pselect if available, in preference to
either 'select' or 'poll'.  Perhaps 'tail' could be rewritten to use
'pselect' if available, falling back on sleep otherwise; that would
tend to avoid big chunks of the minefield.