How do I lock a file in Perl?

Question

What is the best way to create a lock on a file in Perl?

Is it best to flock on the file or to create a lock file to place a lock on and check for a lock on the lock

Answer 1

I think it would be much better to show this with lexical variables as file handlers and error handling. It is also better to use the constants from the Fcntl module than hard code the magic number 2 which might not be the right number on all operating systems.

    use Fcntl ':flock'; # import LOCK_* constants

    # open the file for appending
    open (my $fh, '>>', 'test.dat') or die $!;

    # try to lock the file exclusively, will wait till you get the lock
    flock($fh, LOCK_EX);

    # do something with the file here (print to it in our case)

    # actually you should not unlock the file
    # close the file will unlock it
    close($fh) or warn "Could not close file $!";

Check out the full documentation of flock and the File locking tutorial on PerlMonks even though that also uses the old style of file handle usage.

Actually I usually skip the error handling on close() as there is not much I can do if it fails anyway.

Regarding what to lock, if you are working in a single file then lock that file. If you need to lock several files at once then - in order to avoid dead locks - it is better to pick one file that you are locking. Does not really matter if that is one of the several files you really need to lock or a separate file you create just for the locking purpose.