Bash script — determine if file modified?

Posted by Alan H. on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Alan H.
Published on 2011-01-14T21:26:41Z Indexed on 2011/01/15 2:53 UTC
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mac

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bash

I have a Bash script that repeatedly copies files every 5 seconds. But this is a touch overkill as usually there is no change.

I know about the Linux command watch but as this script will be used on OS X computers (which don’t have watch, and I don’t want to make everyone install macports) I need to be able to check if a file is modified or not with straight Bash code.

Should I be checking the file modified time? How can I do that?

Edit: I was hoping to expand my script to do more than just copy the file, if it detected a change. So is there a pure-bash way to do this?

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