[ILUG] Perl file locking

[frank.05 at neo.tamu.edu]

I have a problem with one of my scripts.
I have tried to lock a datafile but when when the script is executed there is no data saved on the specified files.
Can anyone help me out? i have checked my permisions and evrything is set ok.

here is part of the script

sub lock 
   {
	flock (DATAFILE, 2);
	seek (DATAFILE, 0, 2);
   }
sub unlock
   {
	 flock (DATAFILE, 8);
   }
 
sub write_data
   {
	$i=1; 
 open(DATAFILE, ">>/data.txt");
 open(LOG_OUT,">>/data.log");
 print LOG_OUT "$response{$i}:";
   $i++;    
 while ( $item{$i} gt " ")
       {
         print DATAFILE "$response{$i}:";
         print LOG_OUT  "$response{$i}:";
	 $i++;
       }

print LOG_OUT "\n";
   close(DATAFILE);
   close(LOG_OUT);   
       }

lock(DATAFILE);
 &write_data;
unlock(DATAFILE);