Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Message-ID: <4325BCC7.69E022DC@dessent.net> Date: Mon, 12 Sep 2005 10:37:11 -0700 From: Brian Dessent MIME-Version: 1.0 To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Subject: Re: rm problem: Directory not empty References: <20050912172243 DOT 85297 DOT qmail AT web31502 DOT mail DOT mud DOT yahoo DOT com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-IsSubscribed: yes Reply-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com "James R. Phillips" wrote: > Isn't this issue a potential problem with any multitasking OS ? If there is a > windows-specific feature to this issue, I am not aware of it. In *nix, you can successfully unlink an open file. Its directory entry will be removed but its inode will remain until all open handles are closed. Any programs still using the file will continue to do so obliviously, until the last open handle is closed at which point the inode is deleted and the file is actually gone. This allows the system to e.g. replace in-use libraries and then just restart any services that were using that library. In windows, a file cannot be deleted until all outstanding file handles are closed. I think there is an option you can give to the system to tell it to delete the file for you when all handles are closed, but this still does not allow for the above behavior where you can actually replace an in-use file with a new one. Brian -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/