Question

Is there a simple way to detect when a file for writing is closed? I have a process that kicks out a new file every 5 seconds. I can not change the code for that process. I am writing another process to analyze the contents of each file immediately when it is created. Is there a simple way to watch a certain directory to see when a file is no longer opened for writing? I’m hoping for some sort of Linux command.

Answer 1

you can put something on top of strace to raise your events.

try:

strace ls 2>&1 | grep "close\|open"

Using inotify is also a good idea, but will probably require more coding to get what you need.