Check that file is not being written to before moving to in shell script

Question

I need to write an Unix Shell Script tran.sh that moves the csv input files from /exp/files folder to /exp/ready directory. The csv input files are written to /exp/files folder by an SFTP server whose behavior I cannot trivially change.

In tran.sh shell script I need to ensure before doing a move of that csv input file from /exp/files directory no longer any other process is writing to the file. How can I move it?

Answer 1

lsof might be what you want (it is after all, the command to list open files). If your files have a known naming convention, run an lsof <filename> against it to check if it is indeed being used by a process. If it isn't, lsof will return a non-zero return code.