For the record, the example given here has an explicit command to truncate the file, however with a 'write mode' of 'w', it will do this for you automatically, so the truncate call is not needed.(PHP 5 >= 5.1.0, PHP 7, PHP 8)
SplFileObject::flock — Portable file locking
Locks or unlocks the file in the same portable way as flock().
operation
       operation is one of the following:
       
LOCK_SH to acquire a shared lock (reader).
         
        LOCK_EX to acquire an exclusive lock (writer).
         
        LOCK_UN to release a lock (shared or exclusive).
         
        
       It is also possible to add LOCK_NB as a bitmask to one 
       of the above operations, if flock() should not
       block during the locking attempt.
      
wouldBlock
       Set to true if the lock would block (EWOULDBLOCK errno condition).
      
Приклад #1 SplFileObject::flock() example
<?php
$file = new SplFileObject("/tmp/lock.txt", "w");
if ($file->flock(LOCK_EX)) { // do an exclusive lock
    $file->ftruncate(0);     // truncate file
    $file->fwrite("Write something here\n");
    $file->flock(LOCK_UN);   // release the lock    
} else {
    echo "Couldn't get the lock!";
}
?>For the record, the example given here has an explicit command to truncate the file, however with a 'write mode' of 'w', it will do this for you automatically, so the truncate call is not needed.@digitalprecision What you said is not completely true, ftruncate(0); is needed if there was a write to the file before the lock is acquired. You also may need fseek(0); to move back the file pointer to the beginning of the file
<?php
$file = new SplFileObject("/tmp/lock.txt", "w");
$file->fwrite("xxxxx"); // write something before the lock is acquired
sleep(5); // wait for 5 seconds
if ($file->flock(LOCK_EX)) { // do an exclusive lock
    $file->fwrite("Write something here\n");
    $file->flock(LOCK_UN);   // release the lock    
} else {
    echo "Couldn't get the lock!";
}
?>
"lock.txt" content:
xxxxxWrite something here