On Mon, 10 May 1999, Peter Galbavy wrote:
> Unrelated to the original question, but is there or would it be
> useful to have a "log_field_seperator" option, so that (at the
> expense of a couple of bytes of disk per entry) I could change the
> default log format from one lie to the style of output below (in
> my case I would change it to "\n\t" :)
This would be very tedious to implement, since the log lines are all
written using "printf-like" functions. I don't myself think it would be
of much benefit either. However, as always, if lots of people shout that
this is a "must have", I will think about it. But personally I think
there are more important things needed.
I remember when a similar change was made to the smail log format (not
optionally); it seemed wonderful at first, but turned out to be (IMHO)
not as good as expected. It makes it harder to write programs to process
the log[*], and also makes log files even bigger. Note that it isn't "a
couple of bytes per disc entry" - in your example it is 12 bytes.
[*] The eximstats utility would fail to work, for a start.
--
Philip Hazel University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10@??? Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.
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