what is the 'l' permission?

[Henry Spencer]

In article <951 at vsi.COM> friedl at vsi.COM (Stephen J. Friedl) writes:
>I'm speculating on this part, but I guess that setting the `l' mode
>is required because the vast majority of programs don't use locking,
>and the overhead required on each read/write call is probably too much.

Consider a program that mandatory-locks /etc/passwd and then sleeps forever.
Antisocial, no?  So mandatory locking is available only on files that are
explicitly marked as "okay to lock".
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