Do we have file usage command?

From: hiwa (HGA03630_at_nifty.ne.jp)
Date: 10/31/05 

Date: 30 Oct 2005 21:34:21 -0800

If we have it, we'd like to use it in a function similar
to the C library system(), or from a loop in a shell
script .

When a program wants to access file ABC.txt, it wants to
know whether the file is currently accessed by other
program. And our program wants to poll repeating the
command until "OK, it's your turn" would be returned.

Do we, Linux users, have such file-usage-report command?

Thanks in advance for all the gurus.