Is there a way to rename files inside a folder as they're created?
I could run a cron job every few seconds to do something like...
find . -name "file.*" -exec sh -c 'echo mv "$1" "$(echo "$1" | sed s/file.*$/"file-$(date).*"/)"' _ {} ;
but this seems really cumbersome, cycle-wise...
There's a framework in Linux called inotify which allows a program to register a handler to be called each time a file or a directory changes, so if you're writing a C program you can just use that. Obviously, your program will need to be running when the change occurs.
There is a special daemon called incron which is like "cron for inotify" and is able to run scripts when a file/directory changes. It can be installed with sudo apt-get install incron, then you'll need add a few lines to its configuration file.
Here's a helpful article: Linux incrond inotify: Monitor Directories For Changes And Take Action
If you search synaptic for "inotify" you'll find many more libraries and programs with similar functionality.
