This is from my best recollection, so you'll have to bear with me. Is this Windows NT or Windows 95/98/ME?

If it's NT, then the behavior is somewhat sane, one writer and multiple readers of a file shouldn't be a problem. Beware of buffering and all that stuff.

I suspect from your "broken flock" statement that you're not using Windows NT. (Psst! flock() isn't broken, it's just not implemented on Win 95/98/ME, read on for why!)

With 95/98/ME it's a little different. When you open a file for writing, you've effectively locked everyone else out -- for writing, reading or whatever. That's the OS. This isn't Perl's fault. The flock() function doesn't work there, because it really doesn't need to.

The solution is, get a real OS. :)