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

       annotate-output was written by Jeroen van Wolffelaar <jeroen@wolffelaar.nl>. This manpage comes under the
       same  copyright as annotate-output itself, read /usr/bin/annotate-output (or wherever you install it) for
       the details.