I don't quite understand why to use sysopen. The same trouble Gorby has now, I had about two years ago (CGI counter resets for no obvious reason). Later I modified my counting system to something similar to your example. It obviously works, but if it's "bad" code I surely want to understand why and improve it. Here it is:

#! /usr/bin/perl

use Fcntl ':flock';
open(Z,"+<count.txt")||&neu;
flock(Z,LOCK_EX); $z=<Z>; $z++;
seek (Z,0,0); print Z "$z\n"; flock(Z,LOCK_UN); close(Z);
print "Status: 204 No Response\n\n";
exit(0);

sub neu {open(Z,">count.txt"); print Z "0\n"; close(Z); open(Z,"+<coun
+t.txt");}
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