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• fewfewfew

  If you're referring to mIRC locking log files, I remember there being an option to not lock the files (would probably be enabled by default).
  
  There is also a lite scripting language (almost all chat clients like these provide them), as well as a COM interop layer within that language, so it's possible you could bypass the logfiles and implement some script that sends all chat to a COM component (which you could develop easiest in VB.NET or C# if you're familar with either).
  
  I did this several years ago for a customer, they wanted to use an IRC server to provide inter-office collaboration and so I integrated their application with mIRC (which ran in their task-tray all day).
  
  If you need any questions answered on the subject I'd be more than happy to help. I think (but I'm not sure) that Microsoft has published an API for messenger as well, but that's something I know nothing about.
  
  - Shaun
  
  
  

• kneeride

  Hi Shaun,
  
  Thats really helpfull and a quick response to my query which I posted earlier this morning.
  
  I guess that the file being created is locked from reading while the chat is on-going - perhap |I can read a "read-only" copy of the file as being created - this is to do dynamic analysis while the uers is chatting or using MSN Instant Messenger.
  
  Still thats a really good starting point.
  
  I was thinking along the lines of 'c' not sure how different c# is but at least theres a "free" version from Mircosoft now.
  
  Once again thanks - thats really helpful.
  
  Regards,
  
  Graham
  
  

• Catalin Criveteanu

  You might look into IRC (Internet Relay Chat) to see public chat in action. The results vary depending on the network you connect to. You can obtain a windows client at www.mirc.com, the client will have a list of networks.  A good network will have 30k-90k clients connected.
  
  Mirc will also do logging to text files, so you can find a chat channel that fits your needs and activity requirements and enable logging for analysis later.
  
  As far as searching large amounts of text, you could consider using existing technology such as the indexing service in windows, or full-text indexing in mssql. For maximum performance you would want to use assembler or C and find someone who is an ace at managing memory fragmentation/contention.  If you're not looking for bleeding-edge performance you could use something such as C# which will get you not only a richer programming API (Microsoft .NET), but also shorter development cycles (which may mean faster ROI) and still give you access to raw memory (through the use of the unsafe keyword, allowing you to index block of memory via a pointer like you would in C or C++).
  
  There are also some third party libraries available, mostly written for C/Win32, that specialize in indexing text files. I can't think of any names at the moment but I recall doing some api interop for a client last year (he wanted to use a terse C api from VB.NET and needed wrappers developed).
  
  Hope that helps,
  Shaun
  
  
  
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