---
format: markdown
toc: false
title: Pandoc Inbox Watcher Script
...

A tool for running `pandoc` when a file is saved in an inbox directory:

~~~ { .shell }
#!/bin/sh
INBOX=/pub/markdown/inbox
OUTBOX=../outbox/
PANDOC=/home/levi/bin/pandoc_wrapper
cd $INBOX
inotifywait -mqre close_write --format '%f' ${INBOX} | while read FILE
do
    echo "Detected write on file: ${FILE}"
    ${PANDOC} ${FILE} ${OUTBOX}
done
~~~

The `pandoc_wrapper` is a script that calls pandoc with the appropriate parameters for the document formatting I want to do. It takes a source file and a destination directory as parameters; it automatically creates the destination name based on the source file name and the destination directory.

The `inotifywait` program is from the `inotify-tools` package in Ubuntu.