NAME

       annotate-output - annotate program output with time and stream

SYNOPSIS

       annotate-output [options] program [args ...]

DESCRIPTION

       annotate-output will execute the specified program, while prepending every line with the current time and
       O for stdout and E for stderr.

OPTIONS

       +FORMAT
              Controls the timestamp format, as per date(1).  Defaults to "%H:%M:%S".

       -h, --help
              Display a help message and exit successfully.

EXAMPLE

       $ 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

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.

SEE ALSO

       date(1)

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).

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 annotate-output script itself was re-written by Johannes
       Schauer Marin Rodrigues <josch@debian.org> and can be redistributed under the terms of the Expat license.

DEBIAN                                          Debian Utilities                              ANNOTATE-OUTPUT(1)