While loop to test if a file exists in bash

Question

I\'m working on a shell script that does certain changes on a txt file only if it does exist, however this test loop doesn\'t work, I wonder why? Thank you!

Answer 1

If you are on linux and have inotify-tools installed, you can do this:

file=/tmp/list.txt
while [ ! -f "$file" ]
do
    inotifywait -qqt 2 -e create -e moved_to "$(dirname $file)"
done

This reduces the delay introduced by sleep while still polling every "x" seconds. You can add more events if you anticipate that they are needed.