Log Files Not Written to Disk

[Undertowe]

I'm in the process of writing a bot in C# to parse virusman's NWNX Chat log file and route player tells to an IRC channel. A portion of my code works like the *nix tail -f command - it monitors the log file for changes and reads those changes when they occur. I'm using the .NET FileSystemWatcher class to accomplish this.

I ran into a problem, however, when I noticed that the FileSystemWatcher wasn't firing an event when the log file was being written. Puzzled, I did some digging around and eventually found the issue. I'm not very familiar with C++, but I discovered that fflush() - which is used by NWNX to write the log files - doesn't immediately write file changes to disk. Hence, the FileSystemWatcher wasn't detecting the write. The issue is described in more detail here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/66052

Could you change the way logs are written by NWNX so that writes are committed immediately to disk? This would allow me to trap the event and get my bot working. Not to mention, it would avoid the danger of data loss in the event of a crash.

Thanks much.

[Papillon]

I have not done any performance measurements, but wouldn't this be bad, performance wise ?

Maybe the way to go would be to compile your own version of the chat plugin, which flushes the changes immediately...
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Papillon

[Grinning Fool]

You might also want to take it one step further -- integrate your bot into the chat plugin. Automatically send Tells directly to the channel, no need to monitor a log -- though I would recommend putting that in a thread for performance.

We're doing something similar in another month or so, allowing DMs to control and speak through NPCs via IRC.
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Khalidine, a NWN2 persistent world

Looking for volunteers.

[nosfe]

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