Changes in Win10 file change notification leads to vanishing files on case rename

Found a bug or something that needs fixing?
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maraskan_user
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Joined: Wed Sep 28, 2011 8:21 am

Changes in Win10 file change notification leads to vanishing files on case rename

Post by maraskan_user »

I observed this on both v1809 and v20H2 of Windows 10. When you only change the case of a file in a rename operation (say "test.txt" to "TEST.txt") in a folder that Explorer++ is displaying (and therefore listening to directory change notifications for), the pattern of notifications sent changed in Windows 10 versus older versions of Windows:

On Windows 7, it would only result in a "renamed" directory change notification.

On Windows 10, it results in FIRST a "removed" notification FOLLOWED by a "renamed" notification. It does not matter if the file is renamed from the same instance of Explorer++, a different instance, or a different program altogether. Renaming files in the official Microsoft file explorer causes the same two directory change messages, so it's not caused by anything Explorer++ does.

Explorer++ sees the "removed notification and duly removes the file from the listview, then handles the renamed notification, notices that the file is not in the internal index, so doesn't need to do anything. The file is gone from the listview until the view is refreshed by F5 or by browsing to a differnt folder and coming back.

Interestingly Microsoft's own file explorer does not remove the file from its own view. I'm assuming it also receives a file removed + file renamed notification like any other process that is monitoring the directory, so it must be doing some additional ruminating on what to do with them.
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