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Exactly. Log files are viewed in a pager, not an editor.

While tools like lnav look great, many of its features can be replicated by combining smaller, purpose built tools, i.e. the core Unix philosophy.

Single log view: cat | less

Filters: rg | less

Decompression: zless, zgrep, rg -z

Timeline view: admittedly tricky, but doable with some incantation of cut, sort or reach for the big guns: awk, perl.

Live operation: not quite, but tail -f and less +F go a long way.

I've never once in almost 20 years of looking at log files thought I needed a SQL interface to them. I'm sure it's a powerful feature, but the above approach has served me well.




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