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.TH ANNOTATE-OUTPUT 1 "Debian Utilities" "DEBIAN" \" -*- nroff -*-
.SH NAME
annotate-output \- annotate program output with time and stream
.SH SYNOPSIS
\fBannotate\-output\fR [\fIoptions\fR] \fIprogram\fR [\fIargs\fR ...]
.SH DESCRIPTION
\fBannotate\-output\fR will execute the specified program, while
prepending every line with the current time and O for stdout and E for
stderr.

.SH OPTIONS
.TP
\fB+FORMAT\fR
Controls the timestamp format, as per \fBdate\fR(1).  Defaults to
"%H:%M:%S".
.TP
\fB\-h\fR, \fB\-\-help\fR
Display a help message and exit successfully.

.SH EXAMPLE

.nf
$ annotate-output make
21:41:21 I: Started make
21:41:21 O: gcc \-Wall program.c
21:43:18 E: program.c: Couldn't compile, and took me ages to find out
21:43:19 E: collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
21:43:19 E: make: *** [all] Error 1
21:43:19 I: Finished with exitcode 2
.fi

.SH BUGS
Since stdout and stderr are processed in parallel, it can happen that
some lines received on stdout will show up before later-printed stderr
lines (and vice-versa).

This is unfortunately very hard to fix with the current annotation
strategy.  A fix would involve switching to PTRACE'ing the process.
Giving nice a (much) higher priority over the executed program could
however cause this behaviour to show up less frequently.

The program does not work as well when the output is not linewise.  In
particular, when an interactive program asks for input, the question
might not be shown until after you have answered it.  This will give
the impression that the annotated program has hung, while it has not.

.SH "SEE ALSO"
\fBdate\fR(1)

.SH SUPPORT
This program is community-supported (meaning: you'll need to fix it
yourself).  Patches are however appreciated, as is any feedback
(positive or negative).

.SH AUTHOR
This manual page was written by Jeroen van Wolffelaar <jeroen@wolffelaar.nl>
and can be redistributed under the terms of the GPL version 2.
The \fBannotate-output\fR script itself was re-written by Johannes Schauer
Marin Rodrigues <josch@debian.org> and can be redistributed under the terms
of the Expat license.