Tail!

Quick and dirty tail application for your command line. Just create a console application, paste this code in, build it and you should be good to go.

Imports System

Imports System.IO

Imports System.Collections

Imports System.Threading

Imports System.Text

Imports Microsoft.VisualBasic

Imports System.Net



Module Module1

    Dim tempstr As String



    Sub Main(ByVal args() As String)

        tailLog(Environment.CurrentDirectory & "\" & args(0))

    End Sub







    Sub tailLog(ByVal logName As String)

        Dim filename As String = logName

        Dim lastLogEntry As DateTime = DateTime.Now

        Dim line As String

        Dim filePath As New FileInfo(logName)



        Try

            Using logReader As New StreamReader(New FileStream(filename, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read, FileShare.ReadWrite))

                'start at the end of the file



                'This is the end of the file, send what's before it.

                Dim logOffset As Long = logReader.BaseStream.Length



                While True

                    Thread.Sleep(750)



                    'If the file size is the same nothing has changed in the log file and we can just loop again.

                    If logReader.BaseStream.Length = logOffset Then

                        Continue While

                    End If



                    'If the stream length changed it probably means the file was truncated or the file length changed

                    'Send the last line and reset the offset to the current length of the file.



                    'seek to the last max offset

                    logReader.BaseStream.Seek(logOffset, SeekOrigin.Begin)



                    'read out of the file until the EOF

                    While (helper(line, logReader.ReadLine())) IsNot Nothing

                        If line = "" Then

                            'If the line has no contents, skip it.

                        Else

                            Console.WriteLine(line)

                        End If



                    End While



                    logOffset = logReader.BaseStream.Position

                End While

            End Using

        Catch ta As ThreadAbortException

            'Thread abort exception will get thrown when the thread gets aborted by the expired timer, if anything needs to be done do it here.

            'EventLog.WriteEntry(My.Application.Info.AssemblyName, ta.Message.ToString)

        Catch ex As Exception

            EventLog.WriteEntry(My.Application.Info.AssemblyName, & ex.Message.ToString)

        End Try



    End Sub



    Function helper(Of T)(ByRef target As T, ByVal value As T) As T

        target = value

        Return value

    End Function