CODEWITHSUNDEEP
powershelltail
RaceBase
RaceBase

Reputation: 18848

Powershell cmd to Tail over the files of Directory

I am looking for Powershell cmd to print the last 5 lines of data from any file in the directory.

Ideally

Get-Content -Tail 5 -Wait .\test.log

will print tail over the specific file from last 5 lines. If any new content is being appended to that file, it will keep printing.

Similarly, I want to tail over all the files from directory. Print the contents if any file is getting modified.

Tried something like this, didn't work!

Get-Content -Tail 5 -Wait .\folder*.log

Upvotes: 3

Views: 2179

Answers (2)

Loïc MICHEL
Loïc MICHEL

Reputation: 26170

You could use a FileSystemWatcher object and the Register-ObjectEvent cmdlet to monitor changes made to the filesystem. Something like this :

$fw = New-Object System.IO.FileSystemWatcher
$fw.Path = "C:\temp\events\test"
Register-ObjectEvent -InputObject $fw -EventName Changed -SourceIdentifier File.Changed -Action {
    #$event  
    write-host "file changed : $($event.SourceEventArgs.Name)"
    get-content  $event.SourceEventArgs.fullpath -tail 5 |out-host
}  |out-null

#unregister event when done
#Unregister-Event -SourceIdentifier file.changed

Upvotes: 0

Jake Bruun
Jake Bruun

Reputation: 1323

While you can use -Tail with multiple files, when using -Wait only the first file will have it changes reported. But this is possible if you use a workflow and run the command in parallel.

# Get-Tail.ps1
Workflow Get-Tail
{
    param (
        [string[]]$Path,
        [int]$Tail
    )

    foreach -parallel ($File in $Path) {
        Get-Content -Path $File -Tail $Tail -Wait
    }
}

Then run the following:

. .\Get-Tail.ps1
$files = (dir .\folder*.log).FullName
Get-Tail -Path $files -Tail 5

Upvotes: 5

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