Re: check if file is already in use before fopen

On Thu, Oct 04, 2001 at 11:10:56AM -0400, Matthew Luchak wrote: > Is there a way to verify if a file is in use by another user before > fopening it? As far as I know this is something you have to program in yourself. If you are only worried about your programs accessing the file, then it is a good idea to create a lock file. Before you access a file called mydata, check for a file called mydata.lock. If that exists, then the file is in use, so wait and check later. If it does not exist, create a file called mydata.lock, open mydata, do with it as you please, close mydata, and delete mydata.lock. You also have to be prepared to handle a situation where your program stops before removing the lock file. Usually with PHP, it is much easier to just use a database so all this file locking is dealt with by the database and not you. -- Jason Stechschulte jpstech@unoh.edu -- Sorry. My testing organization is either too small, or too large, depending on how you look at it. :-) -- Larry Wall in <1991Apr22.175438.8564@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov>