Another approach, perhaps more 'correct' in the views of some, would be to do the following

use Fcntl qw(O_RDWR O_CREAT);
sysopen(TEMP,"external_file.txt.tmp",O_RDWR|O_CREAT,755);
[download]

insted of the normal open.
This has the effect of precreating the file with the correct permissions.

You may also want to check the umask function in perlfunc aswell.

Also of some importance, especially I expect, is the flock function, which you may also w ant to read about.

-nuffin
zz zZ Z Z #!perl