use Fcntl qw( LOCK_EX O_RDWR O_CREAT SEEK_SET ); my $qfn = '/tmp/myfile.index'; sysopen(my $fh, $qfn, O_RDWR|O_CREAT, 0666) or die("Can't create or open \"$qfn\": $!\n"); flock($fh, LOCK_EX); my $index = <$fh>; ++$index; seek($fh, 0, SEEK_SET); print($fh "$index\n"); #truncate($fh, tell($fh));