Monitoring directories and files

inotify is a tool in Linux which is used to report when a file system event occurs. Using inotify, you can monitor individual files or directories.

Getting ready

Make sure you have the inotify tool installed on your system.

How to do it...

Create a script called inotify_example.sh:

#! /bin/bash
folder=~/Desktop/abc
cdate=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d-%H:%M")
inotifywait -m -q -e create -r --format '%:e %w%f' $folder | while read file
do
    mv ~/Desktop/abc/output.txt ~/Desktop/Old_abc/${cdate}-output.txt
done

How it works...

The inotifywait command is mostly used in shell scripting. The main purpose of the inotify tool is to monitor the directories and new files. It also monitors the changes in the files.