I am writing some code that forks off children when clients connect and at certain times needs exclusive access to resources. I don't want a client to sit and wait forever if another process hangs onto a resource for a long period of time. The idea is attempt to lock, if unsuccessful, send the client a timeout message.
     Below is what I have come up with as a solution, I would like to know if anybody has any comments or suggestions as to a better solution:
sub Sem_P {
        my $x;
        open(LOCK, ">$lockfile");

        #Attempt to get a lock
        for($x = 0; ($x = $Lock_Tries) && !flock(LOCK, LOCK_EX | LOCK_
+NB); $x++) {
                #Sleep using select for a granularity 
                #of less than 1 second
                select(undef, undef, undef, $Lock_Timeout);
        }

        return ($x =< $Lock_Tries);
}

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In reply to Non-Blocking Semaphore by JackHammer

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