My experiences are probably platform-dependant on FreeBSD. However, those experiences offer empirical evidence that on my preferred platform, opening the file for write a second time opens the same file, not a new file, and subsequent lock attempts on the write filehandle fail.

Example:

% perl -MFcntl -e 'open my $f, "<foofile"; flock $f, LOCK_EX; open my 
+$g, ">foofile"; flock $g, LOCK_EX|LOCK_NB or die "No lock\n";'       
+         
No lock
%
[download]

In summary: please don't follow my original advice. Merlyn is probably right in the general case, and will probably even find a good explanation as to why I've fooled myself into believing what I do. I'll add a caveat to the particular portion of my brain which holds this information, but I'm unlikely to erase it completely :)

Alan