I've been given the unenviable task of determining when a file stops growing. Under Unix, that's easy. -s, -M, (stat)[9], File::Modified, etc.

Windows? Hah! If you're copying a file in Windows, -s $dest returns the full size and -M $dest (or (stat $dest)[9]) returns the last access time for the source!

I'd really like to avoid reading in the entire file and doing a length check on the bytes that are there, if possible. Some of the files I'll be working with are 500Gig. Also, some of the files could be binary, so I can't just count the number of newlines.

Has anyone figured out a solution for this?

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We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.

The idea is a little like C++ templates, except not quite so brain-meltingly complicated. -- TheDamian, Exegesis 6

Please remember that I'm crufty and crochety. All opinions are purely mine and all code is untested, unless otherwise specified.

In reply to Those unreliable file stat operations in Win32 by dragonchild

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