I have a process that creates many files in a known directory, and the only way to tell how far along it is is to type ls manually. Is there a way to make the output of ls update automatically as new files are created, similar to how tail -f works? Because of their names, every new file appears at the end of the list, so I wouldn't have to worry about them appearing in the middle.
2
10
You can use command like:
watch ls
to loop execution of ls command
If the listing is too long you can add -C to ls
watch ls -C
Or you can create explicit loop with while
while [ 1 ]
do
clear
ls
sleep 60
done
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1Marked this as the answer for being the closest to my intentions, with the added benefit of allowing for the multi-column output of ls. – David Scott Jan 11 at 7:54
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1I turned this into a one-line terminal command to make it into an alias more easily:
while [ 1 ]; do clear; ls; sleep 60; done– David Scott Jan 11 at 7:55 -
@DavidScott, sure, that's possible, feel free to tune the code according to your environment and requirements – Romeo Ninov Jan 11 at 7:57
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2Since you want to watch a progress, something like
watch 'ls -ltr | tail'may suit best. Note the quotes so that the shell does not interpret the|. – rexkogitans Jan 11 at 14:06
8
You can use a script like this that monitor every changes and after any change it makes a ls sorted by date. To be able to execute it you would need inotify-tools installed. The script would be the following:
#!/bin/bash
DIRECTORY="your_directory_path"
inotifywait -m -r -e create --format '%w%f' "${DIRECTORY}" | while read NEW
do
ls -hltr
done
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I like this answer because it doesn't "poll" and update every X seconds. Instead, it will trigger a refresh when there is a reason to refresh. Presumably, it will react more quickly than
sleep 60will allow. – Christopher Schultz Jan 11 at 18:09
inotify. – Kusalananda Jan 11 at 7:25