Waiting until a file is available for reading with Win32

Question

I\'m watching a directory by calling ReadDirectoryChangesW synchronously. When a new file is available, I try to access it immediately with CreateFile

Answer 1

There's no user-mode API for notifications on a closed file that I'm aware of. The loop you've proposed is really probably the best way. The only other thing you could do would be to watch for CloseFile in a filter driver ala Process Monitor, but yuck...