>
>It's all a bit more involved. First, do you want to open the file with 12 (exclusive)? If so, I would not be able to analyze it, etc.?
>
>And it will require more changes - so becomes more complex to do a re-write.



Not necessarily more complex

You could have a function WriteLogLine() which in the current scenario would perform one strtofile()
That is already better

As to the read access to the log file from another program, there must be a way using CreateFile() API http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa363858(VS.85).aspx

Where
- dwDesiredAccess is GenericWrite
- dwShareMode is FILE_SHARE_READ



And - for looking at the log file : tail - f comes to mind - I found a Windows version - not tested - http://tailforwin32.sourceforge.net/