• 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 preventing reading of the file while it is being modified or deleted. Systems implement locking to prevent an interceding update scenario, an example of a race condition, by enforcing the serialization of update processes. Shell scripts and other programs often use a strategy similar to file locking: They create lock files, which are files whose contents are typically irrelevant and whose sole purpose is to signal that some resource is locked. ← Wikipedia

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