NAME

Linux::Inotify - Classes for supporting inotify in Linux Kernel >= 2.6.13

SYNOPSIS

Linux::Inotify supports the new inotify interface of Linux which is a replacement of dnotify. Beside the class Linux::Inotify there two helper classes -- Linux::Inotify::Watch and Linux::Inotify::Event.

DESCRIPTION

class Linux::Inotify

The following code

   use Linux::Inotify;
   my $notifier = Linux::Inotify->new();

returns a new notifier.

   my $watch = $notifier->add_watch('filename', Linux::Inotify::MASK);

adds a watch to filename (see below), where MASK is one of ACCESS, MODIFY, ATTRIB, CLOSE_WRITE, CLOSE_NOWRITE, OPEN, MOVED_FROM, MOVED_TO, CREATE, DELETE, DELETE_SELF, UNMOUNT, Q_OVERFLOW, IGNORED, ISDIR, ONESHOT, CLOSE, MOVE or ALL_EVENTS.

   my @events = $notifier->read();

reads and decodes all available data and returns an array of Linux::Inotify::Event objects (see below).

   $notifier->close();

destroys the notifier and closes the associated file descriptor.

class Linux::Inotify::Watch

The constructor new is usually not called directly but via the add_watch method of the notifier. An alternative contructor

   my $watch_clone = $watch->clone('filename');

creates an new watch for filename but shares the same $notifier and MASK. This is indirectly used for recursing into subdirectories (see below). The destructor

   $watch->remove()

destroys the watch safely. It does not matter if the kernel has already removed the watch itself, which may happen when the watched object has been deleted.

class Linux::Inotify::Event

The constructor is not called directly but through the read method of Linux::Inotify that returns an array of event objects. An Linux::Inotify::Event object has some interesting data members: mask, cookie and name. The method

   $event->fullname();

returns the full name of the file or directory not only the name relative to the watch like the name member does contain.

   $event->print();

prints the event to stdout in a human readable form.

   my $new_watch = $event->add_watch();

creates a new watch for the file/directory of the event and shares the notifier and MASK of the original watch, that has generated the event. That is useful for recursing into subdirectories.

AUTHOR

Copyright 2005 by Torsten Werner <twerner@debian.org>. The code is licensed under the same license as perl: perlgpl or perlartistic.