What is locking (flock) in Perl?

Locking in Perl is a mechanism used to control access to a file or resource in a multi-process environment. It prevents multiple processes from writing to or reading from a file at the same time, which can cause data corruption or inconsistencies. The `flock` function is used to achieve this locking mechanism.

By using `flock`, you can obtain a lock on a file handle, ensuring that only one process can modify the file at a time. This is particularly useful in scenarios where multiple scripts or programs may attempt to access the same file concurrently.