Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] tetheral and -i - (stdin) option ...

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From: "Guy Harris" <gharris@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2002 12:52:57 -0800 (PST)
rmkml said:
> Hello,
>
> I found option for pipe stdin in ethereal,
> (ethereal -i -)
>
> but this option is not in tethereal !
>
> Is it possible include this options in next version of tethereal ?

Not without either

1) changing the library Ethereal and Tethereal use to read captures to be
able to, in some cases, read from a pipe

or

2) having Tethereal, if told to read from a pipe, use the less-capable
code that Ethereal uses for the "-i" option.  ("Less-capable" means that
it assumes that the capture file is a standard libpcap file; it cannot
automatically detect the type of file, because the code that does
automatically detect the file currently does so by reading some of the
file's contents multiple times - that requires that it be able to seek
back to the beginning of the file and try reading again, and that doesn't
work on a pipe.)

It is possible to include that option if somebody writes code to do so and
contributes it to Ethereal.  I have enough things I'm *already* working on
for Ethereal that *I* will almost certainly not be doing it.