updated title. to more closely reflect my goal. update.. I have my file mover built, now I want to monitor the srcdir, to make sure the other program is not hung so i installed file monitor but its giving me this error, I am not sure i am even referring to the objects correctly here and apparently I am not as I get this message.. global symbol object requires explicit package name in copy.pl line 36 global symbol object requires explicit package name in copy.pl line 39 I guess I am just dense but I don't understand the watch with callback, I am guessing that means if it changes to call some other file? 
 
use File::Copy::Recursive; 
use File::Find;
use strict;


my $srcdir='c:\\inetpub\\performancetesting\\output\\new\\';
my $destdir='c:\\';
 File::Copy::Recursive::dircopy $srcdir, $destdir or die "Copy failed:
+ $!";
use File::Monitor;

    my $monitor = File::Monitor->new();

    # Just watch
    $monitor->watch('c:\\inetpub\\performancetesting\\output\\new\\mlx
+\\aar\\04-16-2009.txt');

    # Watch with callback
    $monitor->watch('otherfile.txt', sub {
        my ($name, $event, $change) = @_;
        print "file has been changed";
        # Do stuff;
    });

    # Watch a directory
    $monitor->watch( {
        name        => 'c:\\inetpub\\performancetesting\\output\\new\\
+mlx\\',
        recurse     => 1,
        callback    => {
            files_created => sub {
                my ($name, $event, $change) = @_;
                print "something modified in directory mlx";
            }
        }
    } );

    # First scan just finds out about the monitored files. No changes
    # will be reported.
    $object->scan;
    my $monitor->scan;    
    # Later perform a scan and gather any changes
    my @changes = $object->scan;

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I have a need to monitor text files as they are being updated by another application, ideally I would like to access the files shortly after the other program has written to them to check values against a threshold, as well as validate them to ensure they are in a proper format for input into a db, these checks can occur after the other program is finished with them if need be, but I would like to be able to send alerts in real time should the values for these transactions exceed the limits, in addition I would like the limits themselves to be user configurable and I would like to then copy the files into another location so my sql transaction can pick them up.

In reply to monitor text files by grashoper

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