Where to Intercept Real Time Data on Windows?

[12AX7]

Hi All,
I was thinking about how something like Poker Spy or some of these HUD programs might work that show the hole cards as soon as they are available in the hand history(?).

Anyone know how that data is intercepted?

Is it pulled from the TCP/IP connection? The file system, etc.? Perhaps there's some Windows event that can be programmed for?

[OrcaDK]

It's grabbed from the hand histories.

[12AX7]

Hi OrcaDK,
Forgive my ignorance here. Haven't looked at things like MFC since 1994. LOL! I'm still stuck in the land of IBM 370 Assembler Language, MVS, Principles of Operations, and Structured Programming. (Can you say dinosaur? [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img])

So is there some Windows event or something that let's me know the data has been written?

Just trying to visualize how to this would work.

Since it's coming from the hand histories, I'm speculating that you're telling me the data gets picked up from the hand history file after the update.

That of course, leads to the question, "How is notification of the update monitored?"

I was just guessing there was some Windows event that could be queued on?

Once I the program knows the data is available, then naturally I have to go get it and process it.

After that I guess I have to figure out how to display it.

Again I was guessing MFC (or Borland's version... OWL)?

Any idea how PERL might or might not fit into this?

Since you are the Guru of MTH, I have to believe you are the person to enlighten me.

I just noticed Express versions of Microsoft's Visual Studio are available. So I thought this might be an interesting way to try to start updating my knowledge of desktop tools.

A quick P.S. I noticed the Visual C++ Express does not include MFC. Know if that's a freely available download, or is this the catch to getting some revenue for old B.G.?

Apparently the othe Visual Express compilers have it, though.

Perhaps Visual Basic is a better choice?

[tigerite]

There is a way of putting a watch on a folder, yeah. Look up WatchFolder on google, with C#. I wrote one for work not long back, they're really quite easy to make.

[OrcaDK]

Don't use MFC [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] I'd suggest C#.

[MrMoo]

Familiar with unix? Just write a program that will tail a file. You can run an endlees loop which continually reads the hand history file. Keep track of how far in you've read the file. Every loop, if file length is greater than how much you've read, grab the new data, reset your pointer and pass the new data off to whatever.

[tigerite]

That would be terribly CPU-intensive, compared to just adding a watch to a folder.