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bug#27368: Minor concern: Confusing tail warning
From: |
Charlie Hagedorn |
Subject: |
bug#27368: Minor concern: Confusing tail warning |
Date: |
Wed, 14 Jun 2017 16:03:07 -0700 |
Hi!
Thank you for maintaining such useful and reliable tools.
Today I came across an unexpected warning in tail. The warning is intended
to handle this case:
[:~]$ tail -f
tail: warning: following standard input indefinitely is ineffective
which is both important and fun.
Today, however, I was surprised to see it appear in this context:
[:~]$ tail -f < /dev/ttyUSB0 > data.dat
tail: warning: following standard input indefinitely is ineffective
The warning was confusing and perhaps inappropriate, as this call actually
*does* something, and is very effective at doing what I want; streaming the
port's output into data.dat.
(Importantly, for reasons I don't yet understand, tail -f /dev/ttyUSB0 >
data.dat does not reliably tail the port; it redirects only one line of
output instead of a continuous stream).
System is Debian Jessie -- coreutils v8.23-4.
Thanks!
Charlie
- bug#27368: Minor concern: Confusing tail warning,
Charlie Hagedorn <=