how to tell when a file is modified by other programs

[gillyAmes]

Good Morning,
I'm using wxWidgets to make a gui that writes a text file. It also has the ability to load in pre-written files. the file extension is .in . The in/output is all done with ofstreams and ifstreams. What I'm wondering is, is there a way to detect when a file has been altered by another program or is open in another program? Notepad++ for example, has a reload message when files are modified by another program. Can i do this in a simple way using the stream class or related objects? I've looked through the documentation and couldn't find any flags of the kind "no access to other programs" or anything. I do know that when a .csv file is open in excel, the fail bit is set for a stream. This does not happen when the same file is open in notepad, but that would be the kind of thing I'm looking for.
Many thanks in advance,
Gilly

[kbw]

There are OS specific solutions, there isn't a general solution.

By mentioning Notepad++, I take it you mean Windows. Here's an MSDN example:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa365261%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

[gillyAmes]

thanks for the reply,
I was looking for a platform independent solution actually, hence the desire to use C++ stream classes. But if it can't be done, it can't be done.
Many thanks,
Gilly

[kbw]

RedHat Linux 8 introduced the File Alteration Manager. It dramatically reduced the performance of the GUI, but that was a long time ago; it has to be better now.

If you want a Linux solution, here is is:
http://oss.sgi.com/projects/fam/

[gillyAmes]

thanks again