Right.Certainly on all platforms there must be *some* locking primitive. We just need to figure out the appropiate parameters to fcntl() or flock() or lockf() on each.
The Win32 API for locking seems mighty strange to me.
Linux/Unix byte locking is advisory (meaning that one lock can block another lock, but it can't block a read). Win32 locking is mandatory (at least in the most portable form) so a lock blocks a reader. To avoid that problem, youlock a byte that you never intend to read (that is, you lock a byte past the end of the file). Locking past the end-of-file is portable to all Unix/Linux systems that I've seen (that way, you can lock a region of a file before you grow the file).
-- Korry
