inotify file in C

Question

I am trying to run an example of inotify in C..but it\'s not working. I want to monitor modifications to a file (the file is tmp.cfg), but it doesn\'t work..I don\'t know if

Answer 1

You have 2 issues. First, as far as I can tell, inotify does not really work on files - it needs directory name to watch.

Second, you missed if (event->len) { inside while loop.

This code works for me for creating, deleting and modifying files in current directory:

#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 

#define EVENT_SIZE  (sizeof(struct inotify_event))
#define BUF_LEN     (1024 * (EVENT_SIZE + 16))

int main(int argc, char **argv) {
    int length, i = 0;
    int fd;
    int wd;
    char buffer[BUF_LEN];

    fd = inotify_init();

    if (fd < 0) {
        perror("inotify_init");
    }

    wd = inotify_add_watch(fd, ".",
        IN_MODIFY | IN_CREATE | IN_DELETE);
    length = read(fd, buffer, BUF_LEN);

    if (length < 0) {
        perror("read");
    }

    while (i < length) {
        struct inotify_event *event =
            (struct inotify_event *) &buffer[i];
        if (event->len) {
            if (event->mask & IN_CREATE) {
                printf("The file %s was created.\n", event->name);
            } else if (event->mask & IN_DELETE) {
                printf("The file %s was deleted.\n", event->name);
            } else if (event->mask & IN_MODIFY) {
                printf("The file %s was modified.\n", event->name);
            }
        }
        i += EVENT_SIZE + event->len;
    }

    (void) inotify_rm_watch(fd, wd);
    (void) close(fd);

    return 0;
}