Reading file contents when file has changed

[Simon]

On 13/07/2012 21:47, Kevin Cox wrote:
>
> On Jul 13, 2012 4:40 PM, "OlaOst" <olaa81 at gmail.com
> <mailto:olaa81 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>  >
>  > I'm working on a program (using dmd 2.059 under windows) that
> automatically reloads the contents of a file if it has changed, by
> checking the last modified timestamp on the file every 0.2 seconds, then
> using the readText function in std.file to read in the file contents.
>  >
>  > It works pretty well, but every once in a while I get a "The process
> cannot access the file because it is in use by another process" error
> message. I guess this happens when my D program tries to read the file
> before the text editor manages to close its handle on the file.
>  >
>  > This would be fair enough if I was writing to the file in my D
> program, but I only want to read from it. Is this a bug or is there a
> better way to get file contents in D?
>
> While the text editor is writing the file reading it is a silly thing to
> do (no one knows what's there).  I'm not familiar with windows but
> locking under Linux works as so.  Any number or processes can have a
> read lock but if there is a write lock only the single process can
> access that file.
>
> Also isn't there something like inotify on windows?  Polling sounds like
> the wrong solution.
>

Yes:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa365261%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

It's not straight forward to use though and I doubt that the necessary 
function definitions are provided by the default dmd windows imports.

-- 
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