Visual Basic comparing two .txt documents

[Mike Schwartz]

> > Quoting Mike Fedkiw <filepro at adelphia.net>:

> I have an ordering program for my customers to use. They download it
> from my
> web site. What I am trying to do is have the ordering program match a
> list
> of images on a web site to their inventory file on their computer and
> download any images they are missing. Everything is set to go but the
> comparing of the two files just takes too long.
> 
> I don't want to give them any more programs they have to install for
> this to
> work. Whatever I use has to be part of the initial program install and
> hopefully not need a DOS window to run in.

     In the lines of your images file, can you also add a creation date or
update date for that image?  Then sort the images file on that date in
descending order (most recent images first).

     On your client machines, store the date of "Last download of images".
Then each client would simply have to read the first few lines of that file
and download the new images until they hit that date.

     As a backup, in case somebody deleted one or more older images from
their client computer, you would have to have an "image not found" error pop
up, along with a "Just a second while I download that image" message.

Mike Schwartz