Bash script for inotifywait - How to write deletes to log file, and cp close_writes? - bash

Question

I have this bash script:
#!/bin/bash
inotifywait -m -e close_write --exclude '\*.sw??$' . |
#adding --format %f does not work for some reason
while read dir ev file; do
cp ./"$file" zinot/"$file"
done
~
Now, how would I have it do the same thing but also handle deletes by writing the filenames to a log file?
Something like?
#!/bin/bash
inotifywait -m -e close_write --exclude '\*.sw??$' . |
#adding --format %f does not work for some reason
while read dir ev file; do
# if DELETE, append $file to /inotify.log
# else
cp ./"$file" zinot/"$file"
done
~
EDIT:
By looking at the messages generated, I found that inotifywait generates CLOSE_WRITE,CLOSE whenever a file is closed. So that is what I'm now checking in my code.
I tried also checking for DELETE, but for some reason that section of the code is not working. Check it out:
#!/bin/bash
fromdir=/path/to/directory/
inotifywait -m -e close_write,delete --exclude '\*.sw??$' "$fromdir" |
while read dir ev file; do
if [ "$ev" == 'CLOSE_WRITE,CLOSE' ]
then
# copy entire file to /root/zinot/ - WORKS!
cp "$fromdir""$file" /root/zinot/"$file"
elif [ "$ev" == 'DELETE' ]
then
# trying this without echo does not work, but with echo it does!
echo "$file" >> /root/zinot.txt
else
# never saw this error message pop up, which makes sense.
echo Could not perform action on "$ev"
fi
done
In the dir, I do touch zzzhey.txt. File is copied. I do vim zzzhey.txt and file changes are copied. I do rm zzzhey.txt and the filename is added to my log file zinot.txt. Awesome!

Answer 1

You need to add -e delete to your monitor, otherwise DELETE events won't be passed to the loop. Then add a conditional to the loop that handles the events. Something like this should do:
#!/bin/bash
inotifywait -m -e delete -e close_write --exclude '\*.sw??$' . |
while read dir ev file; do
if [ "$ev" = "DELETE" ]; then
echo "$file" >> /inotify.log
else
cp ./"$file" zinot/"$file"
fi
done