FreeBSD Manual Pages
CMDWATCH(1) CMDWATCH(1) NAME cmdwatch - execute a program periodically, showing output fullscreen SYNOPSIS cmdwatch [-dhv] [-n _seconds_] [--differences[=cumulative]] [--help] [--interval=_seconds_] [--version] _command_ DESCRIPTION cmdwatch runs command repeatedly, displaying its output (the first screenfull). This allows you to watch the program output change over time. By default, the program is run every 2 seconds; use -n or --in- terval to specify a different interval. The -d or --differences flag will highlight the differences between successive updates. The --differences=cumulative option makes high- lighting "sticky", presenting a running display of all positions that have ever changed. cmdwatch will run until interrupted. NOTE Note that command is given to "sh -c" which means that you may need to use extra quoting to get the desired effect. Note that POSIX option processing is used (i.e., option processing stops at the first non-option argument). This means that flags after command don't get interpreted by cmdwatch itself. EXAMPLES To watch for mail, you might do cmdwatch -n 60 from To watch the contents of a directory change, you could use cmdwatch -d ls -l If you're only interested in files owned by user joe, you might use cmdwatch -d 'ls -l | fgrep joe' To see the effects of quoting, try these out cmdwatch echo $$ cmdwatch echo '$$' cmdwatch echo "'"'$$'"'" You can watch for your administrator to install the latest kernel with cmdwatch uname -r (Just kidding.) BUGS Upon terminal resize, the screen will not be correctly repainted until the next scheduled update. All --differences highlighting is lost on that update as well. Non-printing characters are stripped from program output. Use "cat -v" as part of the command pipeline if you want to see them. AUTHORS The original watch was written by Tony Rems <rembo@unisoft.com> in 1991, with mods and corrections by Francois Pinard. It was reworked and new features added by Mike Coleman <mkc@acm.org> in 1999. This man page based on the watch man page of the Linux User's Manual. 1999 Apr 3 CMDWATCH(1)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | NOTE | EXAMPLES | BUGS | AUTHORS
Want to link to this manual page? Use this URL:
<https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=cmdwatch&sektion=1&manpath=FreeBSD+12.2-RELEASE+and+Ports>