A simple log file format

Question

I'm not sure if it was asked, but I couldn't find anything like this.

My program uses a simple .txt file for log purposes, It just creates/opens a file and appends lines.

After some time, I started to log quite a lot of activities, so the file became too large and hardly readable. I know, that it's not write way to do this, but I simply need to have a readable file.

So I thought maybe there's a simple file format for log files and a soft to view it or if you'd have any other suggestions on this question?

Thanks for help in advance.

UPDATE:

It's access 97 application. I'm logging some activities like Form Loading, SELECT/INSERT/UPDATE to MS SQL Server ... The log file isn't really big, I just write the duration of operations, so I need a simple way to do this.

The Log file is created on a user's machine. It's used for monitoring purposes logging some activities' durations.

Is there a way of viewing that kind of simple Log file highlighted with an existing tool?

Simply, I'd like to:

1) Write smth like "'CurrentTime' 'ActivityName' 'Duration in milliseconds' " (maybe some additional information like query string) into a file.

2) Open it with a tool and view it highlighted or somehow more readable.

ANSWER: I've found a nice tool to do all I've wanted. Check my answer.

LogExpert

Answer 1

The 3 W's :

When, what and where.

For viewing something like multitail ("tail on steroids") http://www.vanheusden.com/multitail/

or for pure ms windows try mtail http://ophilipp.free.fr/op_tail.htm

And to keep your files readable, you might want to start new files when if the filesize of the current log file is over certain limit. Example:

• activity0.log (1 mb)
• activity1.log (1 mb)
• activity2.log (1 mb)
• activity3.log (1 mb)
• activity4.log (205 bytes)