#!/development/perl/bin/perl 
#===============================================     

    use strict;     
    use vars qw/$PATH/;    
    use Fcntl qw/:flock/;   
    
    $PATH = q[/development/apache2/cgi-bin/hits.txt];    

    main();  

#===============================================  

sub main { 
#----------------------------------------------- 
# Read and write the counts.

    my $out = _read_hits();       
    my $in  = _write_hits(++$out);        
    
# Do something here like print the hits using $in 
    print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
    print $in;
}  
    
sub _read_hits { 
#----------------------------------------------- 
# Load the total hits.        
        
    my $fh = \do { local *FH; *FH };       
    open $fh, $PATH or die qq[$0: $PATH: $!];       
    flock $fh, LOCK_SH;       
    read ($fh, my $hits, -s $fh); 
    
    $hits++; 
}
        
sub _write_hits { 
#----------------------------------------------- 
# Write the total hits.        
    
    my $fh = \do { local *FH; *FH };       
    open  $fh, '>', $PATH or die qq[$0: $PATH: $!];       
    flock $fh, LOCK_EX;       
    print $fh $_[0];  
    
    $_[0]; 
}