CMDWATCH(1)CMDWATCH(1)NAMEcmdwatch - execute a program periodically, showing output fullscreen
SYNOPSIScmdwatch [-dhv] [-n <seconds>] [--differences[=cumulative]] [--help]
[--interval=<seconds>] [--version] <command>
DESCRIPTIONcmdwatch 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 high‐
lighting "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)
