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Comment by teodorlu | Hacker News Reader

I love `entr`, but I've recently moved a lot of my `entr` usage to `watchexec`. Entr requires a file list on stdin, watchexec watches the current folder.

With entr:

    find . | entr COMMAND

with watchexec:

    watchexec COMMAND

Watchexec also gracefully handles new files and file deletions.

https://watchexec.github.io/

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The point is that entr can then focus only on specific files... watchexec now has to add special behaviors for .gitignores and whatnot. It's way more flexible and you can alias this so you don't have to remember anything or save it to ~/bin/my-watcher-thing.sh (both of these things I find people are not using enough).

I think entr handles some things more cleanly, though:

1. Some bash is allowed, which has been confusing me. I'd rather call 'bash -c "echo stuff > file"' myself. 2. Watchexec has its own interface for "filter which files to watch". Entr just relies on unix tools.

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