unlink(2) -- Linux man page
NAME
unlink - delete a name and possibly the file it refers to
SYNOPSIS
#include <unistd.h>
int unlink(const char *pathname);
DESCRIPTION
unlink
deletes a name from the filesystem. If that name was the
last link to a file and no processes have the file open the file is
deleted and the space it was using is made available for reuse.
If the name was the last link to a file but any processes still have
the file open the file will remain in existence until the last file
descriptor referring to it is closed.
If the name referred to a symbolic link the link is removed.
If the name referred to a socket, fifo or device the name for it is
removed but processes which have the object open may continue to use
it.
RETURN VALUE
On success, zero is returned. On error, -1 is returned, and
errno
is set appropriately.
ERRORS
- EACCES
-
Write access to the directory containing
pathname
is not allowed for the process's effective uid, or one of the
directories in
pathname
did not allow search (execute) permission.
- EPERM or EACCES
-
The directory containing
pathname
has the sticky-bit
(S_ISVTX)
set and the process's effective uid is neither the uid of the file to
be deleted nor that of the directory containing it.
- EPERM (Linux only)
-
The filesystem does not allow unlinking of files.
- EPERM
-
The system does not allow unlinking of directories,
or unlinking of directories requires privileges that the
current process doesn't have.
(This is the POSIX prescribed error return.)
- EISDIR
-
pathname
refers to a directory.
(This is the non-POSIX value returned by Linux since 2.1.132.)
- EBUSY (not on Linux)
-
The file
pathname
cannot be unlinked because it is being used by the system
or another process and the implementation considers this an error.
- EFAULT
-
pathname
points outside your accessible address space.
- ENAMETOOLONG
-
pathname was too long.
- ENOENT
-
A component in
pathname
does not exist or is a dangling symbolic link, or
pathname
is empty.
- ENOTDIR
-
A component used as a directory in
pathname
is not, in fact, a directory.
- ENOMEM
-
Insufficient kernel memory was available.
- EROFS
-
pathname
refers to a file on a read-only filesystem.
- ELOOP
-
Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating
pathname.
- EIO
-
An I/O error occurred.
CONFORMING TO
SVr4, SVID, POSIX, X/OPEN, 4.3BSD. SVr4 documents additional error
conditions EINTR, EMULTIHOP, ETXTBSY, ENOLINK.
BUGS
Infelicities in the protocol underlying NFS can cause the unexpected
disappearance of files which are still being used.
SEE ALSO
link(2),
rename(2),
open(2),
rmdir(2),
mknod(2),
mkfifo(3),
remove(3),
rm(1)
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