As mentioned, inotify-tools is probably the best idea. However, if you're programming for fun, you can try and earn hacker XPs by judicious application of tail -f .
How about this script? Uses the 'stat' command to get the access time of a file and runs a command whenever there is a change in the access time (whenever file is accessed).
#!/bin/bash
while true
do
ATIME=`stat -c %Z /path/to/the/file.txt`
if [[ "$ATIME" != "$LTIME" ]]
then
echo "RUN COMMNAD"
LTIME=$ATIME
fi
sleep 5
done
I use this script to run a build script on changes in a directory tree:
#!/bin/bash -eu
DIRECTORY_TO_OBSERVE="js" # might want to change this
function block_for_change {
inotifywait --recursive \
--event modify,move,create,delete \
$DIRECTORY_TO_OBSERVE
}
BUILD_SCRIPT=build.sh # might want to change this too
function build {
bash $BUILD_SCRIPT
}
build
while block_for_change; do
build
done
Uses inotify-tools. Check inotifywaitman page for how to customize what triggers the build.
Just for debugging purposes, when I write a shell script and want it to run on save, I use this:
#!/bin/bash
file="$1" # Name of file
command="${*:2}" # Command to run on change (takes rest of line)
t1="$(ls --full-time $file | awk '{ print $7 }')" # Get latest save time
while true
do
t2="$(ls --full-time $file | awk '{ print $7 }')" # Compare to new save time
if [ "$t1" != "$t2" ];then t1="$t2"; $command; fi # If different, run command
sleep 0.5
done
Suppose you want to run rake test every time you modify any ruby file ("*.rb") in app/ and test/ directories.
Just get the most recent modified time of the watched files and check every second if that time has changed.
Script code
t_ref=0; while true; do t_curr=$(find app/ test/ -type f -name "*.rb" -printf "%T+\n" | sort -r | head -n1); if [ $t_ref != $t_curr ]; then t_ref=$t_curr; rake test; fi; sleep 1; done
Benefits
You can run any command or script when the file changes.
It works between any filesystem and virtual machines (shared folders on VirtualBox using Vagrant); so you can use a text editor on your Macbook and run the tests on Ubuntu (virtual box), for example.
Warning
The -printf option works well on Ubuntu, but do not work in MacOS.
inotifywait -m /path -e create -e moved_to -e close_write | # -m is --monitor, -e is --event
while read path action file; do
if [[ "$file" =~ .*rst$ ]]; then # if suffix is '.rst'
echo ${path}${file} ': '${action} # execute your command
echo 'make html'
make html
fi
done