Should I worry about flock() ?

[Anon]

Hello,

Should I worry about the absence of flock() in Windows?

I'm running Apache on Win98. I'm creating quite a large, user-updateable links directory, controlled with Perl/CGI. Web traffic should be minimal (< 1,000 hits/month).

All similar techniques I've seen use flock() to guard against possible file corruption during multi-user access. How big a concern is this? Or, are there other features or coding that can act as an alternative to flock()?

Many thanks.

[Anon]

Well, sorry it's bad news for you. The flock() function doesn't support in Win9x, but does support in NT/2k..

[brandonschnell]

file corruption isn't extremely likely with a low volume site. but all it requires is two users to save data at the same time and you'll wish you had flock().

1) use a database

2) you could emulate flock() under win9x. before writing to the data file check to see if a lock file exists. if not create a lock file in a known path and write a random number to the file. check to see if the random number is what is expected. now you've got a "lock" on the file. delete the file when finished to clear the "lock". that should work most of the time but isn't a very good replacement for flock().