How to 'grep' a continuous stream?

Question

Is that possible to use grep on a continuous stream?

What I mean is sort of a tail -f command, but with grep on t

Answer 1

If you want to find matches in the entire file (not just the tail), and you want it to sit and wait for any new matches, this works nicely:

tail -c +0 -f <file> | grep --line-buffered <pattern>

The -c +0 flag says that the output should start 0 bytes (-c) from the beginning (+) of the file.

Answer 2

you may consider this answer as enhancement .. usually I am using

tail -F <fileName> | grep --line-buffered  <pattern> -A 3 -B 5

-F is better in case of file rotate (-f will not work properly if file rotated)

-A and -B is useful to get lines just before and after the pattern occurrence .. these blocks will appeared between dashed line separators

But For me I prefer doing the following

tail -F <file> | less

this is very useful if you want to search inside streamed logs. I mean go back and forward and look deeply

Answer 3

I use the tail -f <file> | grep <pattern> all the time.

It will wait till grep flushes, not till it finishes (I'm using Ubuntu).

Answer 4

Didn't see anyone offer my usual go-to for this:

less +F <file>
ctrl + c
/<search term>
<enter>
shift + f

I prefer this, because you can use ctrl + c to stop and navigate through the file whenever, and then just hit shift + f to return to the live, streaming search.

Answer 5

Use awk(another great bash utility) instead of grep where you dont have the line buffered option! It will continuously stream your data from tail.

this is how you use grep

tail -f <file> | grep pattern

This is how you would use awk

tail -f <file> | awk '/pattern/{print $0}'

Answer 6

This one command workes for me (Suse):

mail-srv:/var/log # tail -f /var/log/mail.info |grep --line-buffered LOGIN  >> logins_to_mail

collecting logins to mail service