From ff8d2e2bf131daf3d6841a404149e6fd743ca59b Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Peter van der Weerd Date: Fri, 15 May 2020 17:33:56 +0200 Subject: [PATCH] Updated the docs --- help.html | 4 ++-- help.md | 2 +- 2 files changed, 3 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) diff --git a/help.html b/help.html index 5e1f307..20e8b08 100644 --- a/help.html +++ b/help.html @@ -228,12 +228,12 @@

BigFile (V0.9.3)

BigFile is meant as a viewer for large files on Windows. Like 'less' on Unix systems. The following provides a brief help guide for the core operations of BigFile.

History

BigFile is inspired by Woanware's LogViewer (https://github.com/woanware/LogViewer) -Unfortunately BigFile diverged way too far from the original logviewer, so I decided it deserves its own place.

Opening a file

Either use the File->Open menu item or drag and drop a file onto the list

BigFile can open .zip and .gz files directly. The content will be loaded into memory and served from there. gz-files will be loaded via an internal zlib implementation if found, or via SharpZLib (slower!) .zip files will be loaded via the internal .Net zip-classes.

In case of a zip archive, the largest sub-file will be loaded. Also, a dropdown box with all entries from the zip file is shown. Selecting a different entry from that dropdown will load the associated zip entry from the archive.

The load process is done in the background but regularly sends a partial loaded file to the user-interface, to make it possible to view the file before it is completely loaded.

All background processing can be cancelled by pressing the escape-key, or by clicking in the progress bar.

Search

If the searchbox contains any of AND, OR, NOT, the search is considered to be a boolean search. Otherwise it is a 1-term search. +Unfortunately BigFile diverged way too far from the original logviewer, so I decided it deserves its own place.

Opening a file

Either use the File->Open menu item or drag and drop a file onto the list

BigFile can open .zip and .gz files directly. The content will be loaded into memory and served from there. gz-files will be loaded via an internal zlib implementation if found, or via SharpZLib (slower!) .zip files will be loaded via the internal .Net zip-classes.

In case of a zip archive, the largest sub-file will be loaded. Also, a dropdown box with all entries from the zip file is shown. Selecting a different entry from that dropdown will load the associated zip entry from the archive.

The load process is done in the background but regularly sends a partial loaded file to the user-interface, to make it possible to view the file before it is completely loaded.

All background processing can be cancelled by pressing the escape-key, or by clicking in the progress bar.

Search

If the searchbox contains any of AND, OR, NOT, the search is considered to be a boolean search. Otherwise it is a 1-term search. Also, search types can be specified via a ':'. Following types are supported:

Example

Caching

The last used 20 individual terms from a boolean expression are cached in a bitset. This makes subsequent searching for the same terms blazingly fast.

If you search for paris OR amsterdam, it may take a while. But if you search for paris AND amsterdam afterwards, it is only a bitset operation which is typically sub-second.

In very large files it might be a good trick to do a search for all terms you might want to search for, combined with OR. Afterwards, searching for any combination of these cched terms is really fast.

Result

When the first match is encountered, the view is positioned to the first hit, while the search proceeds in the background.

In the mean time you can navigate to the next search by pressing '/' or F3 in the view window.

Navigation

Bigfile mimics some of the less shortcuts. Shortcuts are:

Filtering

There are two modes for filtering; hide matched and show matched. Filtering and filter clearing is accessed via the list context menu.

Detail view

If you double click on a line, a new form is opened where the current line is viewed in a textbox. The form will be reused whenever a different line is opened, unless you you the alt-key. Using the alt-key makes sure that a new window is opened.

The formatting can be changed between auto (default), text, json, xml and csv. In auto-mode, a quick check is done for the content type and the text is formatted in that content type. In case of errors, it is shown as text. Some formatters support a 'normalized' mode (click the wrench button). For instance, when normalize mode, all keys in a json object will be sorted.

Eventual hits (after a search) are highlighted, and one can navigate between the hits via the same navigation keys as in the main window.

Searching in detail view

By default the search terms from the main form are used in the detail view. However, you can enter more or other terms in the searchbox. Pressing enter or click 'search' will navigate to the highlighted hit in the record.

Search terms follow the same syntax as in the main window, with the exception that boolean expressions (AND, OR, NOT) are not supported. Matching is done by simply searching in the complete text.

Navigation in detail view

Memory

Non zip/gz files can be served from disk or from memory. Compressed files are always served from memory.

Because the content is splitted into lines, the content needs to be read completely for non compressed files as well. So using a memory buffer makes sense there as well.

For very large files it is difficult to keep them in memory. Bigfile uses LZW compression to compress large chunks of memory. Because LZW is extremely fast, this combination is typically faster when the system would need to swap memory.

On my laptop Bigfile loads a 2GB gz json file in ~1 minute into memory (raw: 15GB, LZW compressed ~3GB).

The exact behavior can be configured via tools->settings.

Copy Line

The selected line's contents can be copied to the clipboard via the list context menu. There is a maximum limit of 10000 lines. Also, big lines (> 10MB) will be truncated to prevent an out-of-memory

Export

The export function can export

The export is always line based. Meaning that if splitting of large lines is active, and one selects only a part of the line, the complete line will be exported. -GZip compression of the export file is possible by selecting a .gz extension.

Currently, exported lines are terminated by a windows crlf.

The export functionality is accessed via the 'tools' menu.

Command line

The 1st parameter is the file or directory to be opened. If the parameter indicates a directory, an open file dialog box is shown with the supplied directory as initial directory.

Credits

 

Changes

V0.93 (may 2020)

V0.92 (feb 2020)

diff --git a/help.md b/help.md index 704e4c7..55ea240 100644 --- a/help.md +++ b/help.md @@ -1,5 +1,4 @@ # BigFile (V0.9.3) -[toc] BigFile is meant as a viewer for large files on Windows. Like 'less' on Unix systems. The following provides a brief help guide for the core operations of BigFile. @@ -153,6 +152,7 @@ The 1st parameter is the file or directory to be opened. If the parameter indica #### V0.93 (may 2020) - Gzip saving of export files is supported. - More (de-)selection possibilities. Selections are now handled by the logfile itself, since the ListView was way too slow. +- Line view supports expansion of json, if the json contained strings with encoded json. - Bugfixes. #### V0.92 (feb 2020)