Question

I found there are two ways to approach it, ReadDirectoryChangesW and FindFirstChangeNotification.

I want to know what’s the difference between them, performance or otherwise?

Answer 1

This is tagged for Winapi, but I give it a shot with .net anyway.

You can use the FileSystemWatcher class from System.IO for this.

static void Main(string[] args) {     FileSystemWatcher fsw = new FileSystemWatcher('C:\\');     fsw.Changed += new FileSystemEventHandler(fsw_Changed);     fsw.Created += new FileSystemEventHandler(fsw_Created);     fsw.Deleted += new FileSystemEventHandler(fsw_Deleted);     fsw.EnableRaisingEvents = true;     fsw.IncludeSubdirectories = true;     fsw.Renamed += new RenamedEventHandler(fsw_Renamed);      Console.Read(); }  static void fsw_Renamed(object sender, RenamedEventArgs e) {     Console.WriteLine('{0} was changed to {1}', e.OldName, e.Name); }  static void fsw_Deleted(object sender, FileSystemEventArgs e) {     Console.WriteLine('{0} was deleted', e.Name); }  static void fsw_Created(object sender, FileSystemEventArgs e) {     Console.WriteLine('{0} was created', e.Name); }  static void fsw_Changed(object sender, FileSystemEventArgs e) {     Console.WriteLine('{0} was changed', e.Name); }