| File event notifications in Mac OS | April 7, 2011 |
While using Mac OS, I've been missing the handy Linux inotifywait utility—it's a simple program to use the Linux inotify facility to wait on certain file events. I sometimes write scripts that use inotifywait to automatically launch programs when files are changed. For instance, I can have a script automatically compile a program whenever I save the source file in the editor.
It turns out that Mac OS and other recent BSD operating systems have a similar kernel facility called kqueue, and it was really easy to whip up a small program to block until an event occurs on a file. My filewait program is linked below, and can be used in scripts such as this one:
#!/bin/sh
# wait for the file to change...
while filewait magnumopus.tex; do
# compile the file
sleep 0.2
pdflatex magnumopus.tex
done
Downloads
- filewait.c - My simple program to pause until a file event occurs.
posted at 2011-04-07 21:42:54
by simmons
tags: utility bsd macos
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comments (1)
Posted by Mike H on September 15, 2012 at 07:00 PM MDT #