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Bard fails miserably at recursive programming where ChatGPT gave an almost finished result.
I asked both to write a C++ program given a folder to monitor its contents and recurs down through all sub folders and monitor those files too.
At the moment, Bard hasn’t got a grip on recursive programming. ChatGPT came out the clear winner. Although I did have to coax it to get it to include the right header files.
The final result definitely wouldn’t be production worthy but a good start to show how to work on this particular task type.
#include <iostream> #include <sys/inotify.h> #include <unistd.h> #include <cstring> #include <vector> #include <dirent.h> #define EVENT_SIZE (sizeof(struct inotify_event)) #define EVENT_BUF_LEN (1024 * (EVENT_SIZE + 16)) void monitorDirectory(const char* directory, int fd, std::vector<int>& watchDescriptors) { // Add a watch for the specified directory int wd = inotify_add_watch(fd, directory, IN_MODIFY | IN_CREATE | IN_DELETE | IN_MOVED_FROM | IN_MOVED_TO); if (wd < 0) { std::cerr << "Failed to add watch for directory: " << directory << std::endl; return; } watchDescriptors.push_back(wd); // Scan subdirectories DIR* dir = opendir(directory); if (!dir) { std::cerr << "Failed to open directory: " << directory << std::endl; return; } struct dirent* entry; while ((entry = readdir(dir)) != nullptr) { if (entry->d_type == DT_DIR) { if (std::strcmp(entry->d_name, ".") != 0 && std::strcmp(entry->d_name, "..") != 0) { std::string subdirectory = std::string(directory) + "/" + entry->d_name; monitorDirectory(subdirectory.c_str(), fd, watchDescriptors); } } } closedir(dir); } int main() { int fd = inotify_init(); if (fd < 0) { std::cerr << "Failed to initialize inotify" << std::endl; return 1; } const char* directory = "/home/wlgfx/Downloads"; std::vector<int> watchDescriptors; monitorDirectory(directory, fd, watchDescriptors); std::cout << "Monitoring changes in directory: " << directory << std::endl; char buffer[EVENT_BUF_LEN]; while (true) { int length = read(fd, buffer, EVENT_BUF_LEN); if (length < 0) { std::cerr << "Failed to read events" << std::endl; break; } int i = 0; while (i < length) { struct inotify_event* event = (struct inotify_event*)&buffer[i]; if (event->len) { if (event->mask & IN_CREATE) std::cout << "File created: " << event->name << std::endl; else if (event->mask & IN_DELETE) std::cout << "File deleted: " << event->name << std::endl; else if (event->mask & IN_MODIFY) std::cout << "File modified: " << event->name << std::endl; else if (event->mask & IN_MOVED_FROM) std::cout << "File/Folder moved from: " << event->name << std::endl; else if (event->mask & IN_MOVED_TO) std::cout << "File/Folder moved to: " << event->name << std::endl; } i += EVENT_SIZE + event->len; } } // Cleanup for (int wd : watchDescriptors) inotify_rm_watch(fd, wd); close(fd); return 0; }
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I don’t think the title of your article matches the content lol. Just kidding, mainly because I had some doubts after reading the article.