nitpick, it should be `touch a c & mv a b & mv c d` as `&;` returns `bash: syntax error near unexpected token `;'`. I always find this oddly weird, but that would not be the first pattern in BASH that is.

`inotifywait` actually sees them in order, but nothing ensure that it's that way.

  $ inotifywait -m /tmp
  /tmp/ MOVED_FROM a
  /tmp/ MOVED_TO b
  /tmp/ MOVED_FROM c
  /tmp/ MOVED_TO d

`stat` tells us that the timestamps are equal as well.

  $ stat b d | grep '^Change'
  Change: 2026-02-06 12:22:55.394932841 +0100
  Change: 2026-02-06 12:22:55.394932841 +0100

However, speeding things up changes it a bit.

Given

  $ (
    set -eo pipefail
    for i in {1..10000}
    do
      printf '%d ' "$i"
      touch a c
      mv a b &
      mv c d &
      wait
      rm b d
    done
  )
  1 2 3 4 5 6 .....

And with `inotifywait` I saw this when running it for a while.

  $ inotifywait -m -e MOVED_FROM,MOVED_TO /tmp > /tmp/output
  cat /tmp/output | xargs -l4 | sort | uniq -c
  9104 /tmp/ MOVED_FROM a /tmp/ MOVED_TO b /tmp/ MOVED_FROM c /tmp/ MOVED_TO d
  896 /tmp/ MOVED_FROM c /tmp/ MOVED_TO d /tmp/ MOVED_FROM a /tmp/ MOVED_TO b