Building a Real-Time File Monitor with Goroutines and Channels
File monitoring is a common requirement in many applications: watching for configuration changes, processing uploads, syncing directories, or building development tools. In this post, we’ll build a production-ready file monitoring service that tracks word counts across all files in a directory using Go’s powerful concurrency primitives. The Challenge Build a service that: Monitors a directory and all its subdirectories Counts words in all files in real-time Updates counts when files are modified, created, or deleted Processes multiple files concurrently Provides current statistics on demand Handles errors gracefully Why This Matters Real-time file monitoring powers many production systems: ...