Re: Accessing PDA in cradle from Windows

[gwhite]

What about setting up synchronization of those files, then dealing with the file contents on the PC. So basically you plug in the device, it syncs to the PC, Perl does what it does using the PC based files and if files get updated or created they get dropped back into the sync directory which puts them back on the device. Not elegant, but you didn't ask for elegant.

[traveler]

When I plug the PDA into the cradle, how do I know when the files have been synced?

[gwhite]

I would say when the time stamp changes in the sync directory. You have been so vague on what you are trying to do it is going to be difficult to help you more than we have without you giving us more details.

[traveler]

First, the timestamp on the directory would be interesting but would have to be checked continualy. Also, if I have n files on the PDA, how do I know they all have been synced? It is clear MS does not want a PDA seen as a drive.

What I want to do is: given a file on the PDA, be able to run a perl script on the XP box to process the data on the PDA file. One example is to extract info from a text file and insert portions into a databse on a web server. Another is to sort data in a text file on the PDA. I do not have room for perl on the PDA.

Yes, Microsoft's design clearly is to use synced files. Maybe what I need to do is to find a tool to start a process when it detects that a PDA has been placed in the cradle and has been fully synced. I could then process a space on the synced directories and the data would be re-synced to the PDA.

I understand that it is not a good idea to do a lot of processing on flash memory because it "wears out", so maybe syncing is the best approach.