Multiple inotify events in one script

Question

I'm trying to write a bash script (which is installed as a service) to watch multiple directories and move any files that are created in that directory to another directory. For example, I want to move any files created in /home/test/directory1 to /opt/directory1 but I also want to move any files created in /home/test/directory2 to /opt/directory2 but all in one script as a running service. This is my script so far;

#/bin/bash

directory=/home/test/directory1
archive=/home/test/archive
target=/opt/directory1

inotifywait -m "$directory" --format '%w%f' -e create |
    while read file; do
        cp "$file" "$archive"
        mv "$file" "$target"
    done

Any pointers would be greatly appreciated, Thanks.

Answer 1

Sure, that can be done, with a little bit of extra logic; caveat: this assumes that any of the target directories exist in both /home/test and under /opt and that their names match.

#!/bin/bash
# we use an array to store the watched directories
directories=(/home/test/directory5 /home/test/directory6)
archive="/home/test/archive"
target="/opt"
inotifywait -m --format '%w%f' -r -e create "${directories[@]/#/}" | 
    while read spotted; 
        do
            cp "${spotted}" "$archive"
            mv "${spotted}" "$( echo ${spotted}|awk 'BEGIN{FS=OFS="/"}{print "/opt",$(NF-1),$NF }')"
        done

Another observation: should a file of the same name be created in either of your directories the target in archive will be overwritten. You may want to think about that.