I've a perl cgi program hosted at the free hosting site netfirms. I use flat files for the database and the program has worked fine for almost a year - adding and updating entries into flat files of 40-50 lines each. If an update on an entry is required, usually only about two files are affected.
Today, something happened to one of the flat files. It became corrupted! I'm puzzled how that happened. I've never experienced anything like that with my other scripts on other sites (also using flat files).
My question is: What could have caused the file to become corrupted? Could it be a result of someone updating the file and another person accessing the script which required accessing the same file at the same instant? Or is it something to do with the server?