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Date:      Thu, 20 Dec 2007 12:51:26 -0500
From:      Mikhail Teterin <mi+mill@aldan.algebra.com>
To:        Erik Osterholm <freebsd-lists-erik@erikosterholm.org>
Cc:        questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: tail does not exit
Message-ID:  <200712201251.27067.mi%2Bmill@aldan.algebra.com>
In-Reply-To: <20071220165807.GA34089@aleph.cepheid.org>
References:  <200712192322.lBJNMfps053071@aldan.algebra.com> <200712201102.59565@aldan> <20071220165807.GA34089@aleph.cepheid.org>

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=DE=C5=D4=D7=C5=D2 20 =C7=D2=D5=C4=C5=CE=D8 2007 11:58 =C4=CF, Erik Osterho=
lm =F7=C9 =CE=C1=D0=C9=D3=C1=CC=C9:
> Ah, I see. =9AWith very, very long lines, tail doesn't send the output
> all at once. The cutoff seems to be 65536 bytes on my system.

They don't even have to be very very long -- unless in an artificial exampl=
e,=20
such as the one I posted. Normal-width text files can also trigger=20
inconsistent behavior in some real-life scenario, where awk actually does=20
some real processing of its input for a while. The awk script may decide to=
=20
quit after processing the first 1000 (normal-length) lines, for example...=
=20

The behavior of the program will then be different depending on whether the=
=20
average line-length is above, at, or below 65.536 characters.

Maybe, it is awk's fault -- it should not be read-ing more than one line at=
 a=20
time, because the script may cause it to ignore some of the read data.

Using line-buffering or some such?

 -mi



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