Check for open file

[CGibson]

Hello,

Is there a way to verify if a file is already open?

I know you can access a file with a file handle

IF FILE(cPath)		
   FileHandle = FOPEN(cPath, 1)
ELSE  // If not create it.
   FileHandle = FCREATE(cPath) 
ENDIF
		
IF FileHandle < 0     // Check for error opening file
   WAIT 'Cannot open or create output file.' WINDOW NOWAIT
ENDIF

The above just indicates that the file can't be opened but no reason is available.
In order to provide more feedback to the user (or to suggest a course of action - such as closing the file), I want to determine if the user has the file open.

Is this possible?

Thanks,
Cory

[chris.mavin]

Hi Cory,

There is no operating system agnostic way to determine if a text file is already open.

[yvonne.milne]

Hi Cory,

Is it actually a specific file you need to open? Is it a scenario where you could create a temporary file (TMPNAM() will give you a temporary file name in the temporary files directory) so that multiple users aren't trying to access the same file?

Regards,

Yvonne

[CGibson]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for the reply although I'm surprised this doesn't exist, especially since other languages seem to have the ability to check for open files.

Hi Yvonne,

It is a specific file that is being accessed for a report.
This way the user can view it immediately after is created or whenever they want to.

I have it set to reuse the report if it already exists so that only one version of the report exists.

Cory

[yvonne.milne]

Hi Cory,

If it's the CSV report files we are talking here and the CSV is already open in Excel, the fopen() will return a filehandle of -1, ferror() will return -1, errno() will return 13 and strerror(errno()) will return 'Permission denied'. That doesn't tell you who has the file open, or whether the 'Permission denied' is due to another cause.

Regards,

Yvonne

[CGibson]

Hi Yvonne,

Thank you for providing the return values for the different error functions.

Yes, in this case it is related to the csv files but in general it could be any file.
I don't think its wise to assume that a file is already open with only a FileHandle return of -1. As I understand it, the -1 only means that an error occurred when Lianja was trying to open the file. Couldn't it also mean that it doesn't exist, or is on another directory, or is in use by another application, etc.?

Cory

[davefoss]

Hi Cory,

On Linux there are tools like lsof and fuser that can give you pretty much any information you want about open files. I am aware of graphical tools that do the same for Windows (Process Explorer comes to mind) but off the top of my head I don't know of one that will do it on the command line.

Dave

[CGibson]

Hi Dave,

I appreciate your feedback and the feedback received from everyone else.

Cory

[barrymavin]

What Chris said was there is no operating system agnostic way of doing this.

Also this has nothing to do with databases and tables. This is only to do with text files that you are creating programmatically.

In Linux you can open a file up multiple times. This is a Linux feature. Nothing to do with Lianja. Windows will not allow a file to be opened shared unless specifically opened with sharing permissions. Obviously you don't want that when creating text files.

The error messages returned as described by Yvonne are all you get from windows.

You mention other languages do this and that. Well I don't know of any. If a file is currently open non shareable as is the case in point then you can't open it and "permission denied" refers to the "Incompatible attempt to open when already open in non shared mode".