Can I redirect a file to the terminal?

Question

I know I can redirect all terminal output to a file, but does that work the other way around?

Can I have a terminal window open, in Tmux or elsewhere, that is receiving redirected output from a file in real time? IE if another process is writing to the file, this is being directed to a terminal window?

Use case: REPL swamped by output

The reason I would like this is I would like to see the output of some code in a REPL (Erlang it turns out) which has many processes creating terminal output stuff in background, but this output is very rapid and I "lose" my REPL command line constantly as it is drowned by the output. So I'd like those processes to output to a file instead, but, in another terminal, I still want to see what that output is in real time.

Interestingly, while tail -f works fine with appending to the fille using >>, if I open the file in Vim and add to it, it doesn't work. Just sayin'. Haven't tested with Erlang yet but it's coming up. — Thomas Browne, Oct 28 '18 at 18:31
aha! I need to use -F in that case, because it appears that vim closes and then reopens the file. Okay good news. Isn't Linux foxtrot wonderful! — Thomas Browne, Oct 28 '18 at 18:32
@cat though the answers are the same, I think my question is phrased for a much broader use case than "watching a log file" and so may find better traction on search engines. — Thomas Browne, Oct 28 '18 at 19:44
"Traction on search engines" is exactly why we have duplicates. — muru, Oct 28 '18 at 21:07
@muru. I don't understand. So even if my question is erased, it will still "hang around" somewhere invisible and point to the original answer in some search engine-trackable way? — Thomas Browne, Oct 28 '18 at 21:11
Closing as a duplicate doesn't automatically delete them. So, they'll hang around perfectly visible. — muru, Oct 28 '18 at 21:12

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 28 '18 at 18:39

3

tail -f is what I was looking for.

touch ~/foo
tail -f ~/foo

now in another terminal:

echo "hello" >> ~/foo
echo "there" >> ~/foo

Works a charm. Now some programs (vim for example) will close and reopen the file and tail -f will not work, so you will not see additions when you save from vim. In this case, use tail -F, which explicitly follows the filename rather than the descriptor.

answered Oct 28 '18 at 18:39

Thomas Browne

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Don't forget to accept your own answer when you're able :) – cat Oct 28 '18 at 19:39

Can I redirect a file to the terminal?

1 Answers1