What are potential pitfalls of using asynchronous PHP processes for file deletion?

One potential pitfall of using asynchronous PHP processes for file deletion is the risk of race conditions, where multiple processes may attempt to delete the same file simultaneously, leading to unexpected behavior or errors. To solve this issue, you can implement a locking mechanism to ensure that only one process can delete a file at a time.

$lockFile = fopen('delete.lock', 'w');
if (flock($lockFile, LOCK_EX)) {
    // Perform file deletion here
    unlink('file_to_delete.txt');
    flock($lockFile, LOCK_UN);
} else {
    echo 'Unable to acquire lock for file deletion.';
}
fclose($lockFile);