Question

I’m trying to write a small program that would enable users on different computers to modify the same file (in a directory all users have access to) at the same time and see the changes other users make at the same time. Each time a user modify the file, the change will be saved to the file (.txt) and I used FileSystemWatcher to detect the change and update other users with the change.

I noticed I would get a message saying can’t access the file because another process is accessing it if I try to modify and save the file using notepad while my program is running and accessing the same file. My question is will I get the same error message if after my program is developed and running on DIFFERENT computers? If yes, is there anyway to solve that?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

It is possible, but you need to use the full version System.IO.File.Open() like so, which permits other processes to open the same file for read and write access.

using System.IO;

namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            FileStream f = File.Open("c:\file.txt", FileMode.OpenOrCreate, FileAccess.ReadWrite, FileShare.ReadWrite);
        }
    }
}