A standard method to trace and log which software creates and accesses files on my system?

Is there a way to continually trace/log which software is creating and accessing files on my system? I assume these log files would grow very large unless trimmed. I see a bunch of dot files and no way to know what application or installation created these files. For instance in Application Support ~/Library/Application Support/ I have tried using some Terminal commands to get information: od -tx1 file strings man info The impetus for this question is the prevalence of malware, tracking software, caches, etc - so a regular user can know the providence of the files on their system. I believe the system admin term for this process called Auditing. I am aware that many software vendors store license info inside dot files on the system.