Live Search is not persistent

[Hephaestus]

I love BBEdit because I can watch large log files and it handles them effortlessly, even with files that are updated every few seconds.  

But I avoid using it because live search is broken:

1) Not persistent

      Log files, by their nature get updated, often a lot.  When I search on a word using LiveSearch, I see the result for a moment and then is dissappears when the file updates.  

      Why can't Live Search persist?   Live search should keep showing results even when a file is updating regularly.

2) Live Search only shows one item.

     When I search for a term (say, "WARNING") in a large log production file, I often have to scan through hundreds of hits.  But live search only shows one.

     Why can't I see all of them?  If I'm scrolling through thousands of lines, its not reasonable to have to click the arrow button to see all the hits.  Just show them!

The end result is that I use IntelliJ to view log files.  Its not as good with large files, but will show thousands of search its and doesn't break when the file updates.

I would use BBEdit more often if it worked better with large log files.

Thanks.

[Steve deRosier]

On Fri, Dec 13, 2019 at 5:53 AM Hephaestus <kevin...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 2) Live Search only shows one item.
> When I search for a term (say, "WARNING") in a large log production file, I often have to scan through hundreds of hits. But live search only shows one.
> Why can't I see all of them? If I'm scrolling through thousands of lines, its not reasonable to have to click the arrow button to see all the hits. Just show them!

If you highlight a word (say, "WARNING") that will automatically be
highlighted everywhere in the file and you can just scroll down and it
will "Just show them!" Granted, I've never done this on a file that's
constantly updating, so I guess I don't know what it will do in your
use case.

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^^^^^ As it says, email sup...@barebones.com. I've found them crazy
responsive about adding features and fixing bugs if you help them help
you.

IMHO, live viewing of a file that's constantly being appended to is a
pretty specialized use-case. With BBEdit having to constantly reload
and reparse the file, I'm not shocked it doesn't handle your very
specific case perfectly how you want it. It's like you're asking the
Ponies to jump through hoops. There's also applications out there
that are specifically designed to work with log files, like the OSX
included Console.app.

- Steve

[Gustave Stresen-Reuter]

Hi,

I don't mean to deflect from BBEdit but the use case you describe is often handles in the terminal via piped commands. Granted, it may not be quite as flexible as working in a text editor, but it seems to handle most use cases. Try this command on the file and see if it meets your needs:

tail -f path/to/log/file | grep "WARNING"

This will print every line that matches the search term as they are added to the log file. Lines that don't contain the search term will not be printed. You can also do:

tail -f path/to/log/file | grep "WARNING" | bbedit

But I'm not sure if that will work as expected.

I'm sure there is a lot of additional foo (magic) you can do to tweak this for your needs but that should get you started.

Kind regards,

Ted Stresen-Reuter

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[Charlie Garrison]

On 14 Dec 2019, at 8:30, Gustave Stresen-Reuter wrote:

I'm sure there is a lot of additional foo (magic) you can do to tweak this for your needs but that should get you started.

One of the magic spells in iTerm2 (maybe in Terminal too, I haven't looked) is highlighting matching terms. So I can just tail a log file and let iTerm highlight words/rows/backgrounds/whatever. It is particularly useful for multiple highlights, eg using red highlight for errors and blue highlight for warnings.

And sorry for the divergence L-MOM - we're certainly off-topic now, so I'll stop.

-cng

--

Charlie Garrison                   <cha...@garrison.com.au>
Garrison Computer Services      <http://www.garrison.com.au>
PO Box 380
Tumbarumba NSW 2653  Australia