I don't know the platform. On something un*x-like, the following should work (I assume a single logfile, without true rotation {:== writes modulo maxsize} but even that could be handled)

• you read the file doing whatever filtering, and record size read
• you seek to the last position recorded and filter from there
is there any reason why a simple scheme like this could not work? AND of course you should try what has been previously recommended
hth --stephan

thanks guys.....got one more query coming up soon

POE::Wheel::FollowTail would be the POE way to follow the end of a file. It even deals with log file rotation.

FYI, I've been using File::Tail for quite a while and it seems to handle file rotations also. I'm going to try out the POE version though. POE is very cool.

-Paul

I am using POE::Wheel::FollowTail and it is a great module. Handles log file rotation and truncation for you. The event driven system is ideal for loading various forwarders depending on what is seen in the logfile. It took me about a day to hammer together a state-full file follower that parses the file, forwards alerts and generates average stats from performance metrics in the log. POE rocks.

Cheers,
R.

Pereant, qui ante nos nostra dixerunt!

sysopen(RFD, "/usr/local/apache/logs/access_log", O_NONBLOCK);

while(1){

         my $buffer = <RFD>;
         # Do some thing with the line
}
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