File Hooks - possible ?

[SouthOfHeaven]

I am just curious if its possible to make a program (c/c++ whatever language) to "listen" to a specific file on the system. So if someone does "ls" and the file is listed the hook would be triggered, or if the file is edited opened etc.

Any information would be appreciated.

[lookinin]

I think what you want is a named pipe, then you can read that file just as you would any other file:

[Genone]

I think fam/inotify/dnotify is what you want.

[lookinin]

On second glance, I see that you're right, Genone. I misread (as usual), and thought he wanted to send the output of `ls` to a file, but I see now that he wanted it to trigger when someone actually ls'd the file itself.