Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Re: better browsing of IRC logs

On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 04:47:37PM -0500, Benjamin R. Haskell wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Feb 2011, Adam Monsen wrote:
>
> > I use irssi for IRC. I like to quickly browse (local) logs (in vim)
> > sometimes before sending a message. I've got a rather clunky way of
> > browsing them, and I'm fishing for ideas on how to improve the
> > process.

I don't have the impression that you are aware of irssi's /lastlog
command:

-------------------->8 /help lastlog 8<--------------------
LASTLOG [-] [-file <filename>] [-window <ref#|name>] [-new | -away]
[-<level> -<level...>] [-clear] [-count] [-case] [-regexp |
-word] [-before [<#>]] [-after [<#>]] [-<# before+after>]
[<pattern>] [<count> [<start>]]

-clear: remove all lastlog lines from window

-: don't print the "Lastlog:" and "End of Lastlog" messages.
-file: write lastlog to file instead of screen
-window: which window's lastlog to check (output is always to active)
-case: Case-sensitive matching
-force: Force displaying lastlog even if it's longer than 1000 lines
-new: show only lines since last /LASTLOG
-regexp: `text' is a regular expression
-word: `text' must match to full words
-<level>: levels to check (default is all; /help levels for details)
<pattern>: text to search for, or all if empty
<count>: maximum number of lines to show
<start>: skip the last `start' lines

Shows the given number of lines of log from the current window.
-------------------->8 /help lastlog 8<--------------------

I use it to do what I understand you are trying to do. It's great. Coupled
with the /scrollback or /sb command, I can jump back to the timestamp of an
interesting conversation and catch up on what's been said. Irssi keeps enough
lines of chat in memory that I can scroll back far enough in time to not sound
like a broken record. The way I figure it, by the time irssi starts rolling
off old lines of chat, it's not going to be a nuisance to repeat something
that's been said.

--
Erik Falor
Registered Linux User #445632 http://counter.li.org

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