Saving Information in a temporary buffer/file

[marty0315]

I'm still pretty new at Labview and only started to use it about 1 year ago.

I am trying to save a time and date stamp of a temporary buffer to compare to see if any files have been updated, once a file is updated then it will take the new timestamp as a reference. I was thinking of saving it to a temporary text file then read the value and do a compare on the 2 values but is there a more efficent way to do this?

This application could be used for anything just looking for a temporary buffer to be able save a string of data and to keep checking to see if the data is still the same, or if it changes it moves on to the next section on code and saves the new data to the buffer.

Thanks,

Martin L.

[Wayne.C]

Martin,

I would suggest you consider using a functional global to store this.  A great place to start is Ben's community nugget found here.  http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=170&message.id=240328&query.id=260042#M240328 

[Smootastic]

Hi Martin,

The following link is the basic overview of a functional global and can be found in our help file:  Functional Global Variables - LabVIEW 8.6 Help.  This next link shows a good use of a functional global variable:  NI Developer Zone Example:  Global Variables.  Additionally, if you go to Help»Find Examples... and search for globals, two examples "Recent History Buffer" and "Smart Buffer Example" show more uses of a functional global.  Hope this helps!

[mikeporter]

The functional global suggestions are right on target.The only time to write data like this to disk is if you need it to be persistent across application restarts.

Mike...