Can a php file become locked on a busy server?

Hi.

I have a php script which calls in an array (stored in it’s own file - array.php) using require().

My website is currently massively busy, and it seems that this array file is either becoming locked or possibly corrupted by too many requests at once.

I can resolve it by overwriting the file with a backup.

Can a file become locked in this way?

Is there anything I can do about it?

Cheers.
Lee.

Can you elaborate on this a bit more. Are you using any fopen/readfile/fwrite, etc functions?