Thanks for the tip. I was kind of thinking along those lines when I ran into the dead end with unlink. It's either that or making the script set uid as user lock or something, but then I'll have to wrap up the script in a c program. I guess the big plus with the sockets approach would be the ease of using it over the network albiet at a small performance hit. Whatever I come up with I'll post here.
Thanks!

-Lee

"To be civilized is to deny one's nature."