inotifywait

Waits for changes to files. More information: https://manned.org/inotifywait.

• Watch a specific file for events, exiting after the first one:

inotifywait path/to/file

• Continuously watch a specific file for events without exiting:

inotifywait --monitor path/to/file

• Watch a directory recursively for events:

inotifywait --monitor --recursive path/to/directory

• Watch a directory for changes, excluding files, whose names match a regular expression:

inotifywait --monitor --recursive --exclude "regular_expression" path/to/directory

• Watch a file for changes, exiting when no event occurs for 30 seconds:

inotifywait --monitor --timeout 30 path/to/file

• Only watch a file for file modification events:

inotifywait --event modify path/to/file

• Watch a file printing only events, and no status messages:

inotifywait --quiet path/to/file

• Run a command when a file is accessed:

inotifywait --event access path/to/file && command