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Re: curious about some implementation issues



On Friday, October  3 at 06:24 PM, quoth Sergei Gerasenko:
Cool. The only thing I don't understand is that it seems that all file locking in Unix is "advisory" and it's totally up to the program accessing the file whether to respect it or not. Is that true?

Yes, exactly. What that essentially means is that in order for locking to work, everyone involved has to agree to use the same mechanism, which can be a problem given that there are three or more "standard" ways of doing file locks on Unix systems.

Generally, though, the most common method is to use fcntl if available and dot-locking as a fall back. That's what mutt does, and that what most MTAs do as well.

~Kyle
--
The sharpest criticism often goes hand in hand with the deepest idealism and love of country.
                                                  -- Robert F. Kennedy

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