Re^2: using Email to Perl to append to a changelog.txt, html, or .xls?

[freddo411]

The mailbox was checked once every 30 minutes with a script that ran for 30 seconds, so simultaneous file access was high unlikely--but not impossible.

Hmmm. If you are 'reading' a mailbox, as a mail client might, then it seems you wouldn't run into the need to lock the file.

I'd would approach the problem like so:

my $mboxfhandle;

# open $mboxfhandle for readonly

my @mbox = <$mboxfhandle>;  # Let's use lots of memory

# rest of the process ...

Seems like this would catch each new message, and not conflict with any incoming messages.

( on further reflections, I imagine that a mail client must be able to mark messages as read, which would involve a write ... )

[Xenograg]

I meant that simultaneous file access upon the *output file* was high unlikely--but not impossible--because the script should run for only 30 seconds every 30 minutes.