Perl 5 version 22.4 documentation

lock

  • lock THING

    This function places an advisory lock on a shared variable or referenced object contained in THING until the lock goes out of scope.

    The value returned is the scalar itself, if the argument is a scalar, or a reference, if the argument is a hash, array or subroutine.

    lock() is a "weak keyword" : this means that if you've defined a function by this name (before any calls to it), that function will be called instead. If you are not under use threads::shared this does nothing. See threads::shared.