FLOCKFILE(3)						   BSD Library Functions Manual 					      FLOCKFILE(3)

NAME

     flockfile, ftrylockfile, funlockfile -- stdio locking functions

LIBRARY

     Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS

     #include <stdio.h>

     void
     flockfile(FILE *file);

     int
     ftrylockfile(FILE *file);

     void
     funlockfile(FILE *file);

DESCRIPTION

     These functions provide explicit application-level locking of stdio FILE objects.	They can be used to avoid output from multiple threads
     being interspersed, input being dispersed among multiple readers, and to avoid the overhead of locking the object for each operation.

     The flockfile() function acquires an exclusive lock on the specified object.  If another thread has already locked the object, flockfile()
     will block until the lock is released.

     The ftrylockfile() function is a non-blocking version of flockfile(); if the lock cannot be acquired immediately, ftrylockfile() returns non-
     zero instead of blocking.

     The funlockfile() function releases the lock on an object acquired by an earlier call to flockfile() or ftrylockfile().

     These functions behave as if there is a lock count associated with each object.  Each time flockfile() is called on the object, the count is
     incremented, and each time funlockfile() is called on the object, the count is decremented.  The lock is only actually released when the
     count reaches zero.

RETURN VALUES

     The flockfile() and funlockfile() functions return no value.

     The ftrylockfile() function returns zero if the object was successfully locked, non-zero otherwise.

SEE ALSO

     getc_unlocked(3), putc_unlocked(3)

STANDARDS

     The flockfile(), ftrylockfile(), and funlockfile() functions conform to IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 (``POSIX.1'').

BSD
								 January 10, 2003							       BSD