Perhaps that's the case if another process has opened the file and used mandatory locking.

I have to admit that until about 10 minutes ago I thought I had flock under Win32 completely under control. Obviously I dont. Thank you very much for taking the time to correct me even though I obviously wasn't listening properly the first time.

But I also have to admit that this doenst make sense to me. I was under the impression that locks are mandatory on Win32. And evidence that they are abounds. For instance the script you wrote (I called it flock_test.pl) if you run it like

D:\perl\scratch>(start flock_test.pl) && (perl -e "sleep 2") && (echo 
+"foo" > sem.lck)
The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another
+ process.
[download]

So we know that some other processes cant access the file once its locked. But if we do

D:\perl\scratch>(start flock_test.pl) && (perl -e "sleep 2") && (flock
+_test.pl)
Opened file
Printed
Got lock
[download]

Which while proving your point, only leave me even more confused. The way i understood Win32's locking implementation, if the file is locked, then nothing else can mess with the file. So what gives? Why does the shell get blocked from truncating the file, but perl doesn't!?

---
demerphq

_{<Elian> And I do take a kind of perverse pleasure in having an OO assembly language...}