awk colorizer for tail.

One of the problems I have with tail -f maillog.txt | grep "search" is that I really did want to watch the noise and not just the signal. Except that I'd like to notice the signal. Here's my printcolor.awk Now I can use tail -f maillog.txt | awk -f printcolor.awk and see the whole tail, with keywords highlighted in *different* colors.

NOTE: ^[ is supposed to be Ctrl-v, Escape; NOT caret, left bracket.


function colorize(word, color)
{
c["red"] = "^[[1;31;40m"
c["green"] = "^[[1;32;40m"
c["yellow"] = "^[[1;33;40m"
c["blue"] = "^[[1;34;40m"
c["magenta"] = "^[[1;35;40m"
if (line ~ word)
{ split (line, a, word)
line=a[1] c[color] (word) "^[[0;37;40m" a[2]
}
}
{line = $0
colorize("whitelist","green")
colorize("Bayesian Spam","red")
print line
}



ETA: If you'd like to be annoyed/beeped at for something that you're looking for, you can add ctrl-v, ctrl-g in the right hand side, eg: "^G^[[1;32;40m" (not caret G)

Tail for Win32 - Home Page

Tail for Win32 - Home Page

This is one of the "Oh, I didn't know I could do *that*" essential programs for people who want to know what's happening on their system. Want to follow the logs of WindowsUpdate.log in real time? Get this, and open the file.