avoiding file corruption

[Cliff Wells]

On Sun, 2006-08-27 at 07:51 -0700, Amir Michail wrote:

> How often do you need to open a file multiple times for writing?

How often do you write code that you don't understand well enough to
fix?  This issue is clearly a problem within *your* application.

I'm curious how you could possibly think this could be solved in any
case.  What if you accidentally open two instances of the application?
How would Python know?  You are asking Python to perform an OS-level
operation (and a questionable one at that).

My suggestion is that you use a real database if you need concurrent
access.  If you don't need concurrent access then fix your application.

> As a high-level language, Python should prevent people from corrupting
> data as much as possible.

"Data" is application-specific.  Python has no idea how you intend to
use your data and therefore should not (even if it could) try to protect
you.

Regards,
Cliff