Well "what works" is good! I'm not saying that it isn't. If you are waiting for something that might take an hour clock time, who the heck cares if you get an immediate answer? And probably some burned Mips doesn't matter at all? file tail is a polling routine that adjusts its time to the next poll. Fine. Using inotify doesn't involve any polling and therefore a) it is "faster in clock time" and b) uses less Mips to monitor what you want.

What is "best" is very subjective and depends upon the application. I am not judging "right or wrong". I am merely suggesting other ways, which is what I think that you asked for? I don't think that there is a single "right way". There are multiple ways. Whatever achieves the objective is "good". I guess this depends upon what the objective is and how you measure it?

In reply to Re^4: launch long running background program and watch final progress by Marshall
in thread launch long running background program and watch final progress by mabossert

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.