This program uses inotify (man page) to monitor file accesses for each file in $PATH. A potential use-case is to find which files are not needed in a docker-image.

Build

gcc exec_tracker.c -o exec_tracker

Usage

# Track number of times executables in PATH are accessed
./exec_tracker

# Track number of times regular files in <directory> is accessed
./exec_tracker <directory>

Acknowledgments

The code borrows heavily from the inotify manual page in the Linux Programmer's Manual.