Sure, there are flows which are less likely to cause a race condition. But, I am a realist and know many novice programmers can't see a race condition if they are staring at it, and semaphore files take the race out of the condition (sorry, it is bad pun day). Not all processes want to open files for read/write. Some may want only append, or only clobber. By using semaphores, you can avoid trying to have to figure out if you are making a race condition (or worse, finding out the hard way). I prefer the offensive mode of programming when any type of security issue may be involved, such as file locking and race conditions. You see code put on this site where race conditions would happen, so you can see many people do not think of it or recognize it. To each his/her own, but I know my files won't be currupt with semaphores :)