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Created September 2, 2023 10:49
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filewatcher.md

Filewatcher

fswatch is a good program to react to file changes, e.g. run tests when files are updated. It's cross-platform.

fswatch path/to/file | xargs -n 1 bash_command
fswatch ./README.md | xargs -I {} -n 1 pandoc -o README.html README.md
fswatch -o ./*.js | xargs -I {} -n 1 npm test

See tldr fswatch for more examples. Use -v/--verbose to double-check that stuff is happening. -I {} is needed to either insert the filename in a particular place, or to not put it in at the end of the command. -o/--one-per-batch will batch changes together to one alert when many files are changed at the same time. -n 1 is only necessary if you are watching more than one file I think.

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