AutoHotkey Community

[SKAN]

I am experimenting with various versions of FolderSpy and this particular version calls ReadDirectoryChangesW in Synchronous mode.

ReadDirectoryChangesW requires OS >= Win 2000

The problem with synchronous mode in AHK is that AHK is single threaded and ReadDirectoryChangesW can halt/freeze every other operation when it is waiting for an event in the watched folder. Halt means: you cannot start an another thread via hotkey /settimer .. the GUI ( if any ) would not respond for any messages ( including mouse ).. not even a right click on tray icon would work!

To overcome the said effect, the script calls ReadDirectoryChangesW in a seperate thread using CreateThread() and RegisterCallback().
When called in synchronous mode, ReadDirectoryChangesW sets the variable nReadLen ( with number of bytes ) when it exits the wait state.
Therefore, the script calls ReadDirectoryChangesW in a seperate thread and loops to check the variable nReadLen to ascertain whether the wait state has ended.

An interesting fact is that ReadDirectoryChangesW can spy without enough access rights to the folder.

Irrespective of mode, ReadDirectoryChangesW keeps updating the structure and it is upto the user to decide on how frequently to call the ReadDirectoryChangesW. The user may even call it once per hour but the structure size should be large enough to hold all the folder events that may occur during the period, else it will reset and start from the beginning of the Structure. This script uses a 64KB structure.

Disclaimer: I would not say that the script is perfect as it had to undergo a lot of cosmetic changes in last few days in order to make it legible for the average user. I have been testing it over months and had no problems except that I had to clear the ListView when it grows very large ( owing to my system's meagre 256MB RAM ). The script may be considered more as a demo for multi-threading. I will post an another simple script using asynchronous mode, which should be enough for most of the needs.

To stress-test this script, press the Start button and load any MSDN page ( like this ) in Internet Explorer. I get around 2000+ notifications in a few seconds!

[System Monitor]

Cool!

[tic]

pretty cool skan.....

I'd asked for help with this a while ago but couldnt get it to work, and now youve just gone and done it all!

I like it a lot and would love to use it in my programs

[poetbox]

well down!
I like it! :
Your anothor scripts from *.tw cannot be download now.

[SKAN]

[poetbox]

Its http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/topic21630.html

[SKAN]

I confirm you that it works for me .. and BTW it is Windows SPY.

[tic]

little question skan. how would you go about monitoring more than 1 drive? say you wish to watch the C:\ D:\ and E:\ drive simultaneously. cheers

[majkinetor !]

start script 3 times

[tic]

[majkinetor]

That is the only option for you as this script creates thread. As far as my tests can say, creating threads in AHK is bug prone and if I remember correctly Skan said that creating more then 3 will crash AHK. In my case results are even worst, single thread randomly crashes AHK, which seems to depend on what function you execute.

Doing it without threads will block your script.

So, the only viable solution is to use original script aunch it N times externaly, and transmit data to your script. Check out IPC module for details about interprocess communication.

This is ofcourse far from sophisticated as N processes will run for N "rules", but we are out of domain of AHK here.

Perhaps AHK can be updated to support creating threads in safe way, the way that wouldn't crash it, via some command similar to RegisterCallback, but that is for the wish list, if possible at all.
_________________

[SKAN]

[Joy2DWorld]

[tic]

[SKAN]