fileschanged

command-line utility that reports when files have been altered

This software is a client to FAM (File Alteration Monitor). You can use fileschanged in shell scripts to take action when monitored files become altered. In it's simplest form, you can give filenames to monitor from standard-input, and it will report when those files have changed via standard-output. In a more complex usage, fileschanged can monitor command-line specified files recursively, while following symbolic links, while staying on the current filesystem, and reporting deleted files as well as created and changed files that haven't been written to for 2 seconds.