Linux Utility for "Timestamping" Functionality

Question

wget's timestamping functionality ensures it only downloads files that have changed. I'm looking for a linux command-line tool that will recursively compare a directories contents with a saved version (from the last time it ran), and execute an arbitary shell command on any new or updated files. Basically:

run-on-updated --directory /path/to/my/dir --last-results ~/.lastrun --exec "echo {}"

I could even imagine this as an extension of the 'find' command. Does such a tool exist?

Answer 1

An attempt to answer the question -- probably with lots of room for improvement:

tar -cv -f /dev/null -g ~/.lastrun /path/to/my/dir | grep -ve '/$' | xargs -I{} echo '{}'

Note for the tar command: "The option ‘-g’ instructs tar to operate on an incremental archive with additional metadata stored in a standalone file, called a snapshot file. The purpose of this file is to help determine which files have been changed, added or deleted since the last backup, so that the next incremental backup will contain only modified files." (Quote from doc)

The grep command excludes directory names (ending with /) which tar always outputs, and finally xargswill run the desired command on the files.

Answer 2

I am not sure what you mean by the sentence "compare a directories contents with a saved version", but to do what the answer of mpy does, I would prefer find:

Before running the find command the first time, you need to run the touch command do create the timestamp file:

touch .lastrun

Later, run the touch command after the find run:

find my/dir -type f -newer .lastrun -exec echo '{}' \;
touch .lastrun

The file .lastrun will never be listed itself, because it is never newer than itself.