Question

I need to accomplish the following task:

Attempt to move a file. If file is locked schedule for moving as soon as it becomes available.

I am using File.Move which is sufficient for my program. Now the problems are that:

1) I can’t find a good way to check if the file I need to move is locked. I am catching System.IO.IOException but reading other posts around I discovered that the same exception may be thrown for different reasons as well.

2) Determining when the file gets unlocked. One way of doing this is probably using a timer/thread and checking the scheduled files lets say every 30 seconds and attempting to move them. But I hope there is a better way using FileSystemWatcher.

This is a .net 3.5 winforms application. Any comments/suggestions are appreciated. Thanks for attention.

Answer 1

You should really just try and catch an IOException. Use Marshal.GetHRForException to check for the cause of the exception.
A notification would not be reliable. Another process might lock the file again before File.Move is executed.