ts: the timestampimg script

So I finally got around to implementing one of my ideas (which I don't get to do very often!). The idea was posted here: http://gurjeet-rnf.blogspot.com/2008/05/ts.html

I first thought of implementing it in C, and thought that I'd use the time-tested code from postgres sources. I wanted to implement the code in C for performance reason, but then it looked a bit complex to extract PG's code and make it work independently.

So I cooked up a simple shell script that uses the standard 'date' command to get us what we want. Here it is:

$ cat ts.sh

#!/bin/sh
while read line; do
  echo `date`: $line
done

And here's a sample run, but first the script I used to test:

$ cat del.sh

#!/bin/sh
while [[ 1 ]] ; do echo gurjeet singh; sleep 1; done

And the sample run:

$ ./del.sh | ./ts.sh

Mon May 26 19:16:56 IST 2008: gurjeet singh
Mon May 26 19:16:58 IST 2008: gurjeet singh
Mon May 26 19:16:59 IST 2008: gurjeet singh
Mon May 26 19:17:00 IST 2008: gurjeet singh
Mon May 26 19:17:01 IST 2008: gurjeet singh
Mon May 26 19:17:02 IST 2008: gurjeet singh
Mon May 26 19:17:03 IST 2008: gurjeet singh
Mon May 26 19:17:04 IST 2008: gurjeet singh

Since I have a soft spot for Windows, and since this shell script cannot be easily utilized in Windows platform, I am working on a new binary, that will be based on the 'date' command, and work natively on Windows.