Nice ++, but you should know that even WITH flock(), you're not absolutely safe. In any interpreted language, ALL function calls not matter how harmless-looking, are interruptable. And "interruptable" means potential race condition when your functions access the same variable (in this case, a file). While with the simple flock() call, your chances are better that you will not end in a race condition (and basically, for messages less than _POSIX_PIPE_BUF in <limits.h> there is almost zero chance of it). But the possibility still exists, so in the interests of full security and functionality, the filesystem should not be depended on as a backbone to a multiuser interfaces. Sadly, that's not an option here and it looks like the %dbhash via Perl's DBM APIs are the best bet (hint, hint, jptxs).
AgentM Systems nor Nasca Enterprises nor Bone::Easy nor Macperl is responsible for the comments made by AgentM. Remember, you can build any logical system with NOR.

In reply to Re: Re: simple message board gone very wrong? by AgentM
in thread simple message board gone very wrong? by jptxs

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.