Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 22:12:07 +0200
From: "Eli Zaretskii" <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
Sender: halo1 AT zahav DOT net DOT il
To: "Tim Van Holder" <tim DOT van DOT holder AT pandora DOT be>
Message-Id: <3405-Mon19Feb2001221207+0200-eliz@is.elta.co.il>
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CC: djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com
In-reply-to: <CAEGKOHJKAAFPKOCLHDIKELJCAAA.tim.van.holder@pandora.be>
Subject: Re: O_TEMPORARY and unlink()
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> From: "Tim Van Holder" <tim DOT van DOT holder AT pandora DOT be>
> Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 18:33:03 +0100
> 
>      The `unlink' function deletes the file name FILENAME.  If this is
>      a file's sole name, the file itself is also deleted.  (Actually,
>      if any process has the file open when this happens, deletion is
>      postponed until all processes have closed the file.)
> 
> Seems to me that this fits in nicely with the O_TEMPORARY support

We discussed a possibility of supporting this, but it has too many
problems.  For example, if a child program unlinks a file which is
open by in the parent.

On Unix, this magic is on the OS, so it works there.

You can find the discussion in the archives of djgpp-workers.

> (although well-behaved programs will usually close a file before
> unlinking it).

If you unlink an open file on DOS, you run a real risk of corrupting
the FAT.  On Windows 9X it simply fails, while NT (and probably W2K as
well) work like Unix.