Using inotify in a script to monitor a directory

Question

I have written a bash script to monitor a particular directory "/root/secondfolder/" the script is as follows:

#!/bin/sh

while inotifywait -mr -e close_write "/root/secondfolder/"
do
    echo "close_write"
done

When I create a file called "fourth.txt" in "/root/secondfolder/" and write stuff to it, save and close it, it outputs the following but it does not echo "close_write":

/root/secondfolder/ CLOSE_WRITE,CLOSE fourth.txt

can someone point me in the right direction?

Answer 1

You are not far away from solution. If you want to use inotifywait in your while statement you should not use -m option. With this option inotifywait never end because it's the monitor option. So you never go into the while.

This should work :

#!/bin/sh

while inotifywait -r -e close_write "/root/secondfolder/"
do
    echo "close_write"
done