I need to capture the content of a file before its being deleted. This file gets deleted immediately after it is created.

I use the below shell command in the command prompt, but I'm not getting the desired result.

bash-3.00# while true; do cat file* > tempfile; done;

What I'm trying here is to capture the content of "file*" and output it to tempfile. The content of "file*" gets overwritten in the process and I need to see the latest content.

If I don't try to output it in 'tempfile' I could see the content of the file in the command line -> bash-3.00# while true; do cat file*; done;

Any idea if this can be done in a better way?

Please try the following command

while true; do cat file* >> tempfile 2>/dev/null; done;

Thanks Hari for your quick reply. But the command that you suggested appended the tempfile. As I mentioned "file*" is being overwritten and what I need to capture is the latest content of 'file*' before it is deleted, without being appended to tempfile.

The command that I used earlier -> while true; do cat file* > tempfile; done; or
while true; do cat file* > tempfile 2>/dev/null; done;
doesn't write anything into tempfile.

For what I'm understanding you have 1 file, why do you use "file*" in your command?
What is the name of the file and why don't you use cp instead of cat?

Regards

This file (file*) is being created by an application, and the last part of the filename is generated by the application with a random name.

The main intention is to capture the last written data in this file (file*). This file is FTPed to a remote server and immediately after it is FTPed, it is deleted in the Host Server, and I need to capture what data is written just before it got deleted.

If you have just one file you don't have to use a loop, cat file* > tempfile should be sufficient assuming you want to copy the whole contents of your file.

Regards