<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > thanks for the reply, > I have used another method to solve my problem. ie > 1) get the total count of the first file > 2) write this total count to basecnt eg basecnt > 3) get another file, get the total count of this file. eg filecnt > 4) if filecnt > basecnt, read in the values from file[basecnt:filecnt] > 5) if filecnt < basecnt, overwrite original basecnt and start over > again. > > basically, the problem domain is i want to get the most current records > from a log file to review after every 3 hours. so this log file will > increase or accumulate. >
I did this: fp = os.popen('/usr/sbin/logtail /var/log/syslog') loglines = fp.readlines() .... pyparsing ... stuff .... from loglines ;-) Python is maybe overkill too - have "cron" call "logtail" and pibe the output whereever? PS: "logtail" is very simple, it works simply by maintaining a "bookmark" from the last read that is updated after each time the file is read (i.e. on each call). It is probably a very easy thing to implement in Python. On Linux/UNIX syslog+logutils can do a lot of work just by configuration (but you did not say you are on unix) -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list