Wireshark · Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] Reading a capture file from stdin is really working?!?

[Ulf Lamping <ulf.lamping@xxxxxx>]

Guy Harris wrote:

> LEGO wrote:
>
> > Isn't that it is exactly how it should work?
> >  -r for random access
... which doesn't work with pipes.

> >  -i for sequential access.
... which only works with libpcap files.

> Tethereal *itself* doesn't need random access.  It's Wiretap that 
> needs it, to handle the checks to figure out what type of file it's 
> reading.
>
> If we did our own buffering in Wiretap (in addition to, or instead of, 
> the buffering done by the "standard I/O library" routines), and 
> arranged that seeks *within* a buffer were done by using existing 
> stuff in the buffer, then, with a sufficiently large buffer, we could 
> probably support reading sequentially from a pipe.  The buffer might 
> have to be relatively big, for the heuristic file readers, which might 
> have to read a significant amount of the file to be sure of the type, 
> and for the libpcap reader, which has to determine which of various 
> flavors of libpcap, sharing the same magic number, the file is.

Thanks for all replys,

the way I recognized it is exactly as intended.

Regards, ULFL