I have worked on a similar program before. My solution was rather basic. I
assigned the file information to a temporary variable for each file (size,
attribute, creation/modification etc.) using dir function one at a time
within a for each..next loop, and checked for changes. You could cache the
initial file information, load it into an array then compare with the recent
information. This could be triggered with a frequently processing timer. The
interval would be dependent on the nature of the file updates. But this
unfortunately consumes a lot memory space during run-time. If there is
certain risk of manipulating file attributes by anonymous users, which might
risk comparison's safety, then an ascii content match could be implemented
as needed by assigning the txt file to a looong string variable. However,
this method may not enable multiple opening of the files by same code
executing on different computers in the network at the same time.These are
what came out of mind at the moment, I hope they could help.

Regards,

Kiziltan Yuceil, MSc, Env.Eng.
Internet Software Developer
http://www.netbul.com