DragonFly On-Line Manual Pages

CMDWATCH(1)                                                        CMDWATCH(1)

NAME
       cmdwatch - execute a program periodically, showing output fullscreen

SYNOPSIS
       cmdwatch [-dhv] [-n <seconds>] [--differences[=cumulative]] [--help]
       [--interval=<seconds>] [--version] <command>

DESCRIPTION
       cmdwatch runs command repeatedly, displaying its output (the first
       screenfull).  This allows you to watch the program output change over
       time.  By default, the program is run every 2 seconds; use -n or
       --interval to specify a different interval.

       The -d or --differences flag will highlight the differences between
       successive updates.  The --differences=cumulative option makes
       highlighting "sticky", presenting a running display of all positions
       that have ever changed.

       cmdwatch will run until interrupted.

NOTE
       Note that command is given to "sh -c" which means that you may need to
       use extra quoting to get the desired effect.

       Note that POSIX option processing is used (i.e., option processing
       stops at the first non-option argument).  This means that flags after
       command don't get interpreted by cmdwatch itself.

EXAMPLES
       To watch for mail, you might do

              cmdwatch -n 60 from

       To watch the contents of a directory change, you could use

              cmdwatch -d ls -l

       If you're only interested in files owned by user joe, you might use

              cmdwatch -d 'ls -l | fgrep joe'

       To see the effects of quoting, try these out

              cmdwatch echo $$

              cmdwatch echo '$$'

              cmdwatch echo "'"'$$'"'"

       You can watch for your administrator to install the latest kernel with

              cmdwatch uname -r

       (Just kidding.)

BUGS
       Upon terminal resize, the screen will not be correctly repainted until
       the next scheduled update.  All --differences highlighting is lost on
       that update as well.

       Non-printing characters are stripped from program output.  Use "cat -v"
       as part of the command pipeline if you want to see them.

AUTHORS
       The original watch was written by Tony Rems <rembo@unisoft.com> in
       1991, with mods and corrections by Francois Pinard.  It was reworked
       and new features added by Mike Coleman <mkc@acm.org> in 1999. This man
       page based on the watch man page of the Linux User's Manual.

                                  1999 Apr 3                       CMDWATCH(1)