Copy contents of a directory only if a file exists

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

I'm looking to write a script that will check the contents of a directory, and if any files exist in that directory copy them to a temporary folder. The target files are only resident for a few seconds, so I think the script needs to be running constantly.

Any pointers would be really apprecaited.

2 
find . -type f |xargs tar cvf /tmp/a.tar

And I think you shuold know how to untar a.tar

3 
file=myfile
while :
do
   if [ -f $file ];do
      ln -f $file /path/to/temp/dir/
   fi
sleep 2; # Loop every 2 seconds
done

This will be the best way if you want to duplicate the file in the same filesystem.

4

I'll admit this is sloppy programming, but here's the solution that I came up with (placed the script in the target directory):

while 1 = 1
do
cp * /temporarydirectory
sleep 10
done

A CTRL+Break is used to stop the script, but meh...it works and doesn't seem to be too hard on resources.