Let's take a look at how that would be in pseudocode:
Read file "thumbcount.txt" to get previous number of files
Read directory "thumbnails" to get latest number of files
If thumbnails != thumbcount {
Delete everything in thumbnails directory
Recreate thumbnails
}
Get new list of thumbnails
For each thumbnail in thumbnails directory {
Show thumbnail
}
Update thumbnail counter
Make sense? It is really not so hard, albeit in pseudocode currently.