useful little perl script to insert timestamps into your data stream / pipeline

I wrote this script to insert a timestamp into the pipeline. I call it “teetime” after /usr/bin/tee.

It can make vmstat more informative, for example:

vmstat 1 | teetime


14Feb2008-18:21:51 procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- --system-- ----cpu----
14Feb2008-18:21:51 r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa
14Feb2008-18:21:51 1 0 160 15796 41996 255964 0 0 0 0 1035 88 0 0 100 0
14Feb2008-18:21:52 0 0 160 15796 41996 255964 0 0 0 208 1049 99 0 0 99 0
14Feb2008-18:21:53 0 0 160 15796 41996 255964 0 0 0 0 1037 93 0 0 100 0
14Feb2008-18:21:54 0 0 160 15796 41996 255964 0 0 0 0 1014 84 0 0 100 0
14Feb2008-18:21:55 0 0 160 15796 41996 255964 0 0 0 8 1035 84 0 0 100 0
14Feb2008-18:21:56 0 0 160 15796 41996 255964 0 0 0 0 1021 85 0 0 100 0


Best,
Aleksey


#!/usr/bin/perl

# insert a timestamp into the data stream

use POSIX strftime;

while ($_ = ) {
print strftime ("%d%b%Y-%H:%M:%St",localtime(time()));
print $_;
}