[Rd] File lock mechanisms in R

[Henrik Bengtsson]

Hi,

is there a (cross-platform) file-locking mechanism available in R (or
via some package)?

I am looking for a way to have one R session lock a file for
read/write access, while being updated/modified by another R session.
This will provide me with a-poor-mans parallelization method.  It is
ok to have so called advisory looking (as in Unix), which are
non-mandatory to follow.  If not available, I'll use lock files, but
there are some potential problems in creating such in an atomic way.
Ideally I wish to have this working on all platforms.

Cheers

Henrik