File locking

[Anon]

Hi,
I'm writing to a file and I understand that if two or more people write to it a the same time, the file could become corrupted. So you can use flock to lock the file while someone is writing to it.

But what happens about the person who is also trying to write to it? Do they get a file locked message (don't want that) or do you have to loop?

Any code or help would be great.

Cheers,

Jord

[Anon]

Did you read the manual page for flock()? It says (among
other things)

  If you don't want flock() to block while locking, add 4 to operation.

Otherwise it will block. No notification, no need to write a loop (all
good) but also no provision that I can see for a timeout (bad.)

[Anon]

Cheers, I didn't read that page properly!
Thanks again,

Jord