I wonder if there is any way to lock and unlock a file in Linux when I open a file using fopen
(not open
)?
Based on Stack Overflow question C fopen vs open, fopen
is preferred over open
.
How can I implement my own file lock (if possible) by creating and deleting lock files?
using fopen, you cannot lock or unlock a file.
In Java, a file lock can be obtained using FileChannel , which provides two methods — lock() and tryLock() — for this purpose. The lock() method acquires an exclusive lock on entire file, whereas the lock(long position, long size, boolean shared) method can be used to acquire a lock on the given region of a ile.
lock file manually via this command or a similar command on your operating system: rm . git/index. lock .
One common way to lock a file on a Linux system is flock . The flock command can be used from the command line or within a shell script to obtain a lock on a file and will create the lock file if it doesn't already exist, assuming the user has the appropriate permissions.
File locking is a mechanism that restricts access to a computer file, or to a region of a file, by allowing only one user or process to modify or delete it at a specific time and to prevent reading of the file while it's being modified or deleted.
I would strongly disagree with the claim that fopen
is prefered over open
. It's impossible to use fopen
safely when writing a file in a directory that's writable by other users due to symlink vulnerabilities/race conditions, since there is no O_EXCL
option. If you need to use stdio on POSIX systems, it's best to use open
and fdopen
rather than calling fopen
directly.
Now, as for locking it depends on what you want to do. POSIX does not have mandatory locking like Windows, but if you just want to ensure you're working with a new file and not clobbering an existing file or following a symlink, use the O_EXCL
and O_NOFOLLOW
options, as appropriate. If you want to do cooperative locking beyond the initial open, use fcntl
locks.
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