Subject: rm behaviour when file in use by Windows app?
From: Lloyd Wood <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Cc: Lloyd Wood <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 1 Sep 2008 11:29:16 +0100
List-Id: <cygwin.cygwin.com>

I have a question about rm behaviour when the file rm'd is already in  
use by a Windows app. I've looked through the rm manpage/info, but  
that's just the usual GNU stuff; nothing cygwin-specific.

Let's say I'm using the cygwin bash shell to tidy up a directory of  
Acrobat pdfs. I do
rm foo.pdf
but as foo.pdf is already open in the Windows Acrobat reader, nothing  
happens. No error message is given. If I ls, I can still see foo.pdf.

Later, I close foo.pdf in Reader. foo.pdf then immediately and  
silently vanishes from the file system.

I'm having trouble understanding what happens here. Does the rm for  
foo.pdf get queued up somewhere, but is blocked by Acrobat's use? Is  
this the most sensible behaviour?

thanks,

L.

<http://info.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/L.Wood/><[email-masked]>

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