Question

My application use “FileSystemWatcher()” to raise an event when a TXT file is created by an “X” application and then read its content.

the “X” application create a file (my application detect it successfully) but it take some time to fill the data on it, so the this txt file cannot be read at the creation time, so im

looking for something to wait until the txt file come available to reading. not a static delay but something related to that file.

any help ? thx

Answer 1

You can open and read a locked file like this

using (var stream = new FileStream(@"c:\temp\file.txt", FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read, FileShare.ReadWrite)) {
   using (var file = new StreamReader(stream)) {
      while (!file.EndOfStream) {
         var line = file.ReadLine();
         Console.WriteLine(line);
      }
   }
}

However, make sure your file writer flushes otherwise you may not see any changes.