rm

• When the link count reaches 0, the file data is scrubbed

• Well, not quite

• The kernel also has a table of the number of processes that have the inode open

• The file isn't destroyed until this count reaches 0 also

• Why?

• So that this works:

        % long_running_process < data &
        % rm data

• The data file remains until the long-running process exits

• Even though it no longer has a name in the filesystem

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Copyright © 2007 M. J. Dominus