AUTOMATIC UPDATE OF FILE VERSIONS FOR FILES SHARED BY SEVERAL COMPUTERS WHICH RECORD IN RESPECTIVE FILE DIRECTORIES TEMPORAL INFORMATION FOR INDICATING WHEN THE FILES HAVE BEEN CREATED

A computer program/software determines the latest version for one or more data files used by several interconnected computers or workstations, and selectively updates each file version stored in individual directories on the computers or workstations. The program allows sharing of the data files among a group of users working on a large project, for example, by determining, based on the system date/time information obtained from each computer, when a data file was created or last updated in each computer directory. Those data files with the less recent date/time are selectively either replaced or merged with the most recent version of the file via the interconnection structure among the computers. As a result, each computer directory always maintains the most recent version of the data file.