FileSystemWatcher Changed event is raised twice

I am afraid that this is a well-known bug/feature of the FileSystemWatcher class. This is from the documentation of the class:

You may notice in certain situations that a single creation event generates multiple Created events that are handled by your component. For example, if you use a FileSystemWatcher component to monitor the creation of new files in a directory, and then test it by using Notepad to create a file, you may see two Created events generated even though only a single file was created. This is because Notepad performs multiple file system actions during the writing process. Notepad writes to the disk in batches that create the content of the file and then the file attributes. Other applications may perform in the same manner. Because FileSystemWatcher monitors the operating system activities, all events that these applications fire will be picked up.

Now this bit of text is about the Created event, but the same thing applies to other file events as well. In some applications you might be able to get around this by using the NotifyFilter property, but my experience is says that sometimes you have to do some manual duplicate filtering (hacks) as well.

A while ago I bookedmarked a page with a few FileSystemWatcher tips. You might want to check it out.

I've "fixed" that problem using the following strategy in my delegate:

// fsw_ is the FileSystemWatcher instance used by my application.

private void OnDirectoryChanged(...)
{
   try
   {
      fsw_.EnableRaisingEvents = false;

      /* do my stuff once asynchronously */
   }

   finally
   {
      fsw_.EnableRaisingEvents = true;
   }
}

Any duplicated OnChanged events from the FileSystemWatcher can be detected and discarded by checking the File.GetLastWriteTime timestamp on the file in question. Like so:

DateTime lastRead = DateTime.MinValue;

void OnChanged(object source, FileSystemEventArgs a)
{
    DateTime lastWriteTime = File.GetLastWriteTime(uri);
    if (lastWriteTime != lastRead)
    {
        doStuff();
        lastRead = lastWriteTime;
    }
    // else discard the (duplicated) OnChanged event
}

Here is my solution which helped me to stop the event being raised twice:

watcher.NotifyFilter = NotifyFilters.FileName | NotifyFilters.Size;

Here I have set the NotifyFilter property with only Filename and size.
watcher is my object of FileSystemWatcher. Hope this will help.

My scenario is that I have a virtual machine with a Linux server in it. I am developing files on the Windows host. When I change something in a folder on the host I want all the changes to be uploaded, synced onto the virtual server via Ftp. This is how I do eliminate the duplicate change event when I write to a file ( which flags the folder containing the file to be modified as well ) :

private Hashtable fileWriteTime = new Hashtable();

private void fsw_sync_Changed(object source, FileSystemEventArgs e)
{
    string path = e.FullPath.ToString();
    string currentLastWriteTime = File.GetLastWriteTime( e.FullPath ).ToString();

    // if there is no path info stored yet
    // or stored path has different time of write then the one now is inspected
    if ( !fileWriteTime.ContainsKey(path) ||
         fileWriteTime[path].ToString() != currentLastWriteTime
    )
    {
        //then we do the main thing
        log( "A CHANGE has occured with " + path );

        //lastly we update the last write time in the hashtable
        fileWriteTime[path] = currentLastWriteTime;
    }
}

Mainly I create a hashtable to store file write time information. Then if the hashtable has the filepath that is modified and it's time value is the same as the currently notified file's change then I know it is the duplicate of the event and ignore it.