Simple script for executing a command whenever a file in the current directory (or a subdirectory of it) that matches a certain expression (using grep) is changed. The script uses inotifywait (from inotify-tools), i.e. it waits efficiently using inotify. The rationale for watching the whole directory is that editors like VIM work with temporary …

iexec

#!/bin/bash

command="$1"
expression="$2"

$command

inotifywait -r -m --format '%f' -e close_write "$PWD" | while read file; do
  if echo "$file" | grep "$expression"; then
    $command
  fi
done