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How can I detect any file or folder is being copied/moved to a directory and then run a shell script?

The files copied/moved would mostly have the same file names as the existing ones...

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You should probably use inotify, command line tools provided in inotify-tools package.

Also better should be the package inoticoming. Description:

Description: trigger actions when files hit an incoming directory
 inoticoming is a daemon to watch a directory with Linux's inotify
 framework and trigger actions once files with specific names are placed
 in there.
 .
 For example it can be used to wait for .changes files uploaded
 into a directory and call reprepro to put them into your repository.
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Thank you, enzotib but is there a work around if I don't want to install a package? If I want to achieve this without any outside packages? – S.M.09 Sep 6 '11 at 21:10
In such a case, you should check in a loop the presence of files. – enzotib Sep 6 '11 at 21:12
Thats fine until the files that might be copied / moved have different file names to those inside the directory....what for those which have the same name... i.e. those which get overwritten... – S.M.09 Sep 6 '11 at 21:14
You could probably check the inode number, with ls -li – enzotib Sep 6 '11 at 21:27

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