How do I watch a file for changes?

Question

I have a log file being written by another process which I want to watch for changes. Each time a change occurs I\'d like to read the new data in to do some processing on it

Answer 1

If polling is good enough for you, I'd just watch if the "modified time" file stat changes. To read it:

os.stat(filename).st_mtime

(Also note that the Windows native change event solution does not work in all circumstances, e.g. on network drives.)

import os

class Monkey(object):
    def __init__(self):
        self._cached_stamp = 0
        self.filename = '/path/to/file'

    def ook(self):
        stamp = os.stat(self.filename).st_mtime
        if stamp != self._cached_stamp:
            self._cached_stamp = stamp
            # File has changed, so do something...