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[ This is a copy of the program called xtail changed name to ntail for
bizzare reasons. It has been changed around a little to work happily
with PP but otherwise not changed much - JPO ]


"ntail" watches the growth of files.  It is similar to "tail -f", but may
watch many files at once.  The syntax is:

	ntail pathname ...
	
"ntail" will monitor all the specified files and display information added
to them.  If you specify a directory name, "ntail" will watch all the
files in that directory - including those created after "ntail" was
started.  If you give "ntail" a name which doesn't exist, it will watch
for the creation of the named entry.  My favorite usage is:

	ntail /usr/spool/uucp/.Log/*

"ntail" is distributed with a configuration for SCO XENIX.  It has also
been tested on MIPS System V.  I took a shot at BSD portability.  The
main difference is how the "directory" support library is accessed.

To build "ntail":

	- edit the definitions in "ntail.h"
	- run a "make"

A version of "ntail" was originally posted in alt.sources a few months
back.  There are several improvements between this version and the
original:

       - the ability to watch directories
       - the ability to watch entries which don't exist yet
       - the recently changed files display (given upon SIGINT)
       - performance improvements
       - portability improvements

Many of these changes were suggested by David Dykstra <dwd@cbnewsc.ATT.COM>.
The idea of keeping files open and use fstat() rather than stat() was
suggested by changes by another poster (sorry, I lost the article so I
can't provide credit).  However, that version kept *everything* open, and
that just eats too many entries in the file table for me.  You can tweak
the values in "ntail.h" to optimize the response/load characteristics of
"ntail".

Chip Rosenthal
<chip@vector.Dallas.TX.US>

@(#) README 2.1 89/07/26 19:16:34