Fun little script I use to watch for file changes with inotifywait and then run commands when they are modified.

watch-for-changes-then

#!/bin/bash

# quick script to make using inotifwatch easier for simple cases,
# such as when you are editiing files and you want to scp them to another
# system as soon as you make save changes.
#
# Brian Dowling

set -e

usage() {
   echo <<EOT
$0 will Watch for changes and then..

   $0 . -- scp somefile somewhere:/tmp
   $0 somefile -- kill -HUP someprocess
   If you want to pass args to inotify, you can use a double --, e.g.
      $0 . -- --someinotiy --opts -- scp somefile somewhere:/tmp

   --eval
   -e to use 'eval "$*"' on your command, this gives you access to the events, i.e.
      fullpath - concatentad full path+file
      path     - dir of file change (ends in /)
      file     - filename changed
      event    - though this will only be MODIFY in this current version
      ex (contrived):
         watch-for-changes-then -e ~/src -- '(cd $path; ls -la "$(basename "$fullpath")"; ./build )'


   --watch [watch]
      This flag is optional, you can also just add the parameter without the flag


EOT

   exit 1
}

use_eval=''
watch=''
LONGOPTS="watch:,inotifyargs:,help,eval"
SHORTOPTS="ew:i:"
PARSED=$(getopt --options "$SHORTOPTS" --longoptions "$LONGOPTS" --name $0 -- "$@")
echo "$PARSED"
eval set -- "$PARSED"
# XXX We could potentially split args on -- and pass anything before to inotifywait ...
while true; do
#  echo "a: $1"
  case "$1" in
    -h|--help) usage ;;
    -e|--eval) use_eval=y; shift ;;
    --watch) shift; watch="$1"; shift ;;
    --) shift; break ;;
    * ) usage ;;
  esac
done

if [ -z "$watch" ]; then
    [ -z "$1" ] &&  usage
    watch=$1
    shift;
fi

if [ "${1:0:1}" == "-" ]; then
    while [ -n "$1" -a "$1" != '--' ]; do
	     inotifyargs="$inotifyargs $1"
	     shift 
    done
    shift
fi

[ -z "$1" ] &&  usage

# this uses -e to watch for modify then it runs the command on any event...
if [ -f $watch ]; then
    recurse=''
else
    recurse='-r'
fi

set +e
inotifywait --exclude '~$' $recurse -m -e modify -q $inotifyargs $watch |
  while read path event file; do
      fullpath="$path$file"
      echo "$fullpath $event"
      echo "$*"
      if [ "$use_eval" = "y" ]; then
          eval "$*"
      else
          "$@"
      fi
  done