[Unix] MultiTail – extended version of tail -f

Sometimes there is a need to track more than 1 file using tail -f. You can simply type

tail -f file1.txt file2.txt

but results might be inappropriate to your needs. The output will be something like:

==> file1.txt <==
content of file 1

==> file2.txt <==
content of file 2

==> file1.txt <==
add to file 1
add to file 1

==> file2.txt <==
add to file 2

What to do when you don’t want those “==> file1.txt <==" in output?
You can use program called MultiTail:

multitail --mergeall file1.txt file2.txt
content of file 1
content of file 2
add to file 1
add to file 1
add to file 2

As you see, MutltiTail merges multiple lines one under the other without any notifications about file names. This could be desired effect in some cases. MultiTail has a lot of useful options like multiple windows showing different files in console and use regexp to search through the files. I suggest reading man pages to get familiar with this program.

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