The problem
merlyn is trying to point out is that when you open the file for writing (
open (FH, ">file")), you already deleted the contents of the file regardless of any locks. From
perlopentut:
To get an exclusive lock, typically used for writing, you have to be careful. We "sysopen" the file so it can be locked before it gets emptied. You can get a nonblocking version using "LOCK_EX | LOCK_NB".
use 5.004;
use Fcntl qw(:DEFAULT :flock);
sysopen(FH, "filename", O_WRONLY | O_CREAT)
or die "can't open filename: $!";
flock(FH, LOCK_EX)
or die "can't lock filename: $!";
truncate(FH, 0)
or die "can't truncate filename: $!";
# now write to FH
Hope that helps!
