Read From Spreadsheet File.VI - File Conflicts?

[DavidLuprek]

Hopefully this is an easy question. Is anyone familiar with how the "Read From Spreadsheet File.VI" accesses files? Specifically, I am writing a VI to read a CSV log file that another VI writes to. I want to make sure there are no conflicts if the other VI is writing to the log file at the same time I am trying to read from it. I know that I can copy the log file, read from the copy, and delete the copy to ensure there are no conflicts, but I'd prefer not doing this from a performance standpoint. Any help would be great. Thank you!

[smercurio_fc · Accepted solution]

That VI uses standard File I/O functions, which involves opening the file, reading from it, and then closing it. The open mode is set to "read-only", so as long as the other application doesn't have some sort of lock on the file (you didn't indicate what operating system you're using), you should be OK with just reading the file. Of course, you may not get the most recent content of the file, since it depends on when the operating system actually flushes out the contents of the file buffer to disk.

[DavidLuprek]

Thank you!