Watching a text file being written to, then when finished loading it into a text fil

Hi Everyone,

Is there a way VB.NET 2005 can watch a text file be written to, then once the writing stops VB can know to pull the text file into a listbox? Any help would be much appreciated.

What program is used to edit the text file?

I am calling a command line programmatically inside of my vb.net program (see below)

Code:

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Shell(Environ$("comspec") & " /k net view > " & Chr(34) & "C:\netview.txt" & Chr(34), AppWinStyle.Hide)

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Then I am having my app sleep while the file builds (see below)

Code:

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Dim x As Long = 1200 'in milliseconds
System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(x) 'wait for 1200 milliseconds

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Then the app pulls the text file into a listbox after the sleep is complete.


The problem is that sometimes I don’t specify a long enough time to sleep and VB doesn’t pull all the data because the file was still being written to.

I am trying to find a way for VB to check and see when the file is done being written to, so I will have a more ironclad way of pulling all the data from the text file and not just a partial piece of it.

Use a timer to check the file at intervals rather than trying to force your thread to sleep for a certain period of time.

How can I check to see if the file is done?