creating a log file

code snippet to create a module to open a log file for your perl script:

use Fcntl ':flock';
my $openlog = 0;
my $openlog_name="";

sub open_log
{
 my $logfilename = $_[0];
 $openlog = sysopen (LOGFILE, $logfilename, Fcntl::O_WRONLY|Fcntl::O_APPEND|Fcntl::O_CREAT, 0755);
 select(LOGFILE); $| = 1; # make the output unbuffered.  See the discussion of fork in the perlfunc man page.
 select(STDOUT);
 $openlog_name = $logfilename;
 return $openlog;
}

sub log_message {
   my($arg) = @_;
   my $t = localtime;
   # If the log file was successfully opened then log
   if ($openlog) {
       print LOGFILE "$$:${t}: $arg\n";
   } else {
       print "$$:${t}: $arg\n";
   }
}

close(LOGFILE);