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.