Sure, just like VC++ does. You get the last modified time when you open the file, and you periodically check it while you have the file open. If last_mod_time > saved_mod_time, it happened.
There are several ways to do this depending on the platform. I would choose from the following choices:
Cross Platform
Trolltech's Qt has an object called QFileSystemWatcher which allows you to monitor files and directories. I'm sure there are other cross platform frameworks that give you this sort of capability too, but this one works fairly well in my experience.