This manual is incomplete: No attempt is made to explain basic file concepts in a way suitable for novices. Thus, if you are interested, please get involved in improving this manual. The entire free software community will benefit.
This manual was originally derived from the Unix man pages in the distribution, which were written by Ben Asselstine. What you are reading now is the authoritative documentation for the fileschanged program. The man pages will be maintained but will not be as valuable of a resource as this document is.
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The fileschanged utility is a FAM (File Alteration Monitor) client. From the command-line it monitors sets of files and shows you when they change. You can use fileschanged in shell scripts to take action when monitored files become altered. In it's simplest form, you can give fileschanged filenames to monitor from stdin, and it will report when those files have changed via stdout. You can stop fileschanged from monitoring files by pressing CTRL-C. In a more complex usage, fileschanged can monitor command-line specified files recursively, while following symbolic links, while staying on the current filesystem, and reporting deleted files as well as created and changed files that haven't been written to for 2 seconds. This software is protected by the GNU General Public License, so users are free to share and change it.
GNU fileschanged was written by Ben Asselstine.
Here are some realistic examples of running fileschanged.
Try the command `fileschanged -r ~/' . Using this command you can monitor all of the files in your home directory and below. The -r means to monitor subdirectories of any specified directories.
/home/ben/.xsession-errors
/home/ben/mbox
In this example, two files were altered in my (Ben's) home directory after the fileschanged command was executed. When my mbox file changes, I know I have mail. When my .xsession-file changes I know that something has gone wrong with X, or there are some warnings that I want to know about. fileschanged will continue to run until you interrupt it by pressing CTRL-C.
This is the output of the command `fileschanged --help':
Usage: fileschanged [OPTION...] [FILE]... Monitors FILEs for alterations. Display the filenames of FILEs that were created, changed, deleted, started execution or finished executing.
-s, –show=EVENT[,...] Display created, changed, deleted, executing, or executed files (Default is "created,changed") -a, –show-all Display all file events and the associated action -f, –files-to-monitor (Default) Monitor the FILEs on the command line -l, –filelist=FILE Monitor the list of filenames inside FILE -L, –dereference Don't monitor symlinks, monitor what's pointed to -r, –recursive Monitor subdirectories of directories -t, –timeout=N Delay showing changed files for N seconds (Def=2) -p, –display-action Display action when showing altered files -x, –exec=PROG Run PROG when file is altered (PROG action filename) -?, –help give this help list –usage give a short usage message -V, –version print program version
FILEs must exist when monitoring begins, or they will not be monitored.
fileschanged supports the following options:
-p--display-action-s--show=EVENT-c--show-created-C--show-changed-d--show-deleted-e--show-executing-E--show-executed-f--files-to-monitor-l--filelist=FILEi. you can pipe the find command through fileschanged. ii. you can use fileschanged as it's own script. For example you can make a script that looks like:
#!/usr/bin/fileschanged -l
~/mbox
.xsession-errors
All files that you specify must exist when fileschanged begins execution or they will not be monitored.
-r--recursive-t seconds--timeout=seconds-a--show-all-x PROG--exec=PROG-L--dereferenceIf you find a bug in fileschanged, please send electronic mail to benasselstine@gmail.com. Include the version number, which you can find by running `fileschanged --version'. Also include in your message the output that the program produced and the output you expected.
If you have other questions, comments or suggestions about fileschanged, contact the author via electronic mail to benasselstine@gmail.com. The author will try to help you out, although he may not have time to fix your problems.