At 12:35 AM -0400 9/1/04, John E. Malmberg wrote: >Craig A. Berry wrote: > >>There's also a configure-time option in Perl to delete all versions >>of a file, but it's currently not working. John Malmberg submitted a >>patch that makes it work, but I'm afraid I have sat on it for a >>while, though I have not forgotten it and hope to get to it soon. > >IIRC: As part of that patch, it allows a configure time option to use unlink() >instead of remove(). > >What unlink() does is removes a link to a file, and if it is removing the last link >to a file, the file is deleted. > >With remove(), the file is removed, and the links become orphaned if I understand the >UNIX specifications correctly. That is why unlink() may be preferred to remove().
The POSIX standard says, "The remove() function causes the file named by the pathname pointed to by path to be no longer accessible by that name. A subsequent attempt to open that file using that name will fail, unless it is created anew. If path does not name a directory, remove(path) is equivalent to unlink(path). If path names a directory, remove(path) is equivalent to rmdir(path)." That standard definition is available here: http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007908799/xsh/remove.html -- ________________________________________ Craig A. Berry mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] "... getting out of a sonnet is much more difficult than getting in." Brad Leithauser
