How to detect a new file

[mazeing]

I'm trying to write a program that will look in a couple of directories for new files to appear. I currently have two threads that poll in their respective directories for files, then Sleep() for 5 seconds and check again. For some reason, this method uses up almost all of the CPU time
I read a post in this forum yesterday that used FindFirstChangeNotification and WaitForMultipleObjects to search two directories that I was hoping wouldn't use up the CPU, but I can't figure out the search string that I used to find it
Could some please give me an example of how to do this, or point me to the thread that gave this example?

Thanks.

[kuphryn]

One possible solution is ReadDirectoryChangesW().

Kuphryn

[Vanaj]

I have a thread that does the same thing, but I search every 17.5 sec's and have little cpu useage. How many files do you have in the dir and what function are you using to get the file names??

[mazeing]

I have a thread that does the same thing, but I search every 17.5 sec's and have little cpu useage. How many files do you have in the dir and what function are you using to get the file names??

Both of the directories don't have any files in them (until they appear from a external source, of course).
I'm using FindFirstFile() and FindNextFile(). I think I might be getting constant hits on '.' and '..', would ReadDirectoryChangesW() overlook those?

[Vanaj]

Are you looking for specific file extentions ?? or doing something like this ?

sprintf(szFullPathIn, "%s\\%s", pDlg->szPathIn, "*.QT");
hFindFile = FindFirstFile(szFullPathIn, &lpFindFileData);

[Mick]

I read a post in this forum yesterday that used FindFirstChangeNotification and WaitForMultipleObjects to search two directories that I was hoping wouldn't use up the CPU, but I can't figure out the search string that
Thanks.

There is a technical reason behind why you cannot find FindFirstChangeNotification under the CG search, it has to do with the length of the indexed word. I will start the discussion on this issue for you and see if the powers that be can bump the number up

for now, try a search engine like google and plug in CG in the search, you should be able to find the CG thread where you saw the code posted in the results returned.

google:
findfirstchangenotification codeguru