Question

I need to wrap the Unix command “tail -f” in a BufferedInputStream. I don’t want to simulate or mimic tail as stated by this question. Rather, I want to use tail, waiting for it to give me a new line.

Answer 1

Your best bet is to use the Process class and read with a Scanner:

Runtime r = Runtime.getRuntime()
Process p = r.exec("tail -f")
Scanner s = new Scanner(p.getInputStream())
while (s.hasNextLine()) {
    String line = s.nextLine()
    // Do whatever you want with the output.
}

hasNextLine() should block as it’s waiting for more input from the input stream, so you will not be busy-waiting as data comes in.