If race conditions are an issue within the context of your intent, then yes, you'll need to take that into account. Again, one needs to take into account the in

If race conditions are an issue within the context of your intent, then yes, you'll need to take that into account. Again, one needs to take into account the intent and context of the script. If other aspects of the environment ensure that the operations are serialized (say you're making an update to a system which you've rotated out of production for the update), you won't need to worry about race conditions. Need to make sure you have no timing effects? That will effect how the script is written. Need to worry about CPU or IO utilization (including reads)? That will need to be considered.