Opinion on how best to wait for a file

[john bailo]

I'm writing a program to monitor the operation of a process.

Part of the process involves trigging a method,
then waiting for the creation of a flag file. I
want my code to pause at that point.

How would you recomment waiting and monitoring.
I can think of two ways:

0. Start a timer.
1. Raise an event to check for File.Exists("")
2. If File.Exists then Timer.Enabled=false.


Or

Do a while loop, with while(File.Exists())

What do you guys recommend?

 

[Robert Jeppesen]

You have the added option of using a FileSystemWatcher and receive an event
when stuff happens in 'Watched' folders. Details are in MSDN.

 

[Alvin Bruney]

The filesystemwatcher is known to have issues because of the underlying OS
which doesn't always notify the listener. Proceed with caution.

 

[Robert Jeppesen]

Yes, I heard of that pre-2003. Is this still an issue in Framework 1.1?

 

[Bryan Martin]

Do a groups.google.com search on "systemfilewatcher" namespace.

Bryan

 

[Tim Stephenson]

The Filesystemwatcher object is designed to do this, and will raise an event
when a file is created / modified / deleted within a specicified directory.
Get your code to start the watcher, then call the code you need to run once
the file's created in the handler for the appropriate event.

--

Regards

Tim Stephenson MCSD.NET
Charted MCAD & MCSD.NET Early Achiever