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On 19/12/06, Yossi Kreinin <yossi.kreinin@xxxxxxxx.xxx> wrote: > > > >>I'm a programmer. My program created a big file. Give me the > >>POWER to *DELETE* *MY* *FILE*!! > > > > > > On Windows, you'd be told the file is busy and it wouldn't be > > deleted. How is that giving you the POWER to DELETE. YOUR. FILE? > > > > At least Windows fans aren't arguing it's "powerful", just that it's useful. I'm > not a Windows fan though. > > So if Windows does it bad, does it justify whatever Unix does, or should we > compare to the sensible thing to do instead? Nobody seems to have mentioned yet that deleting a file from a directory is purely an operation on that directory, and that involving the file's contents or storage on disk is merely a side-effect when no other link to the file exist. Actually rm(1), that stands for "remove", leads to error concerning what operation is involved (and that's hateful) -- the actual operation that takes place is better called unlinking (and that's how the system call behind rm is named -- unlink(2).) In Unix systems, a file can be linked from several directories, or from processes that have opened it. It will be deleted from the disk only if *all* of those links are gone. On the other hand, I believe that Windows does not allow you to link a file from several places. (Which is hateful, of course.) The Windows behavior of file removal is thus (although still hateful) less hateful that it would be if Windows allowed hard links.There's stuff above here
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