Does anyone have any suggestions for an application that can log serial inputs to file? For linux or windows, I don't mind.
I've got my arduino reading temperatures and printing them to the serial monitor - now I just want to be able to log these readings to file so I can report on them later.
I use "minicom" which is a pretty standard linux/unix app.
You'll find that most programs aimed at serial communications will have some sort of log-to-file capability. If you're looking for something that runs invisibly in the background, or generates timestamps, or stuff like that, it might be more difficult. You could look at the things aimed at "console management" (of server farms) like "conserver"...
If you enjoy programming, another approach is to write a simple sketch in Processing that monitors the serial port and writes incoming data to a file. You could add a graph of the most recent readings if you wanted to display something like that.
If you are using a Windows PC, GoBetwino can log data from Arduino to a txt file. It's even possible to make CSV files that can be imported to databases or spreadsheet programs.
If needed GoBetwino will allow you to send data directly into Excell cells.
The tail suggestion for linux doesn't stop reading and doesn't close the file until you stop it yourself. I program the arduino to send the stuff over and over, and use
cat /dev/ttyUSB0|head -n 5 > fred.txt
It reads 5 lines of output and saves it to a file fred.txt and stops.
You may need to use stty to set the port to the correct baudrate etc beforehand