unlink(2)                                               unlink(2)



     NAME
          unlink - remove directory entry

     SYNOPSIS
          int unlink(path)
          char *path;

     DESCRIPTION
          unlink removes the directory entry named by the path name
          referenced by path.

          When all links to a file have been removed and no process
          has the file open, the space occupied by the file is freed
          and the file ceases to exist.  If one or more processes have
          the file open when the last link is removed, the removal is
          postponed until all references to the file have been closed.

     RETURN VALUE
          Upon successful completion, a value of 0 is returned.  Oth-
          erwise, a value of -1 is returned and errno is set to indi-
          cate the error.

     ERRORS
          The named file is unlinked unless one or more of the follow-
          ing are true:

          [ENOTDIR]    A component of the path prefix is not a direc-
                       tory.

          [EPERM]      A pathname contains a character with the high-
                       order bit set.

          [ENAMETOOLONG]
                       A component of a pathname exceeded NAME_MAX
                       characters, or an entire pathname exceeded
                       PATH_MAX.

          [ELOOP]      Too many symbolic links were encountered in
                       translating a pathname.

          [ENOENT]     The named file does not exist.

          [EACCES]     Search permission is denied for a component of
                       the path prefix.

          [EACCES]     Write permission is denied on the directory
                       containing the link to be removed.

          [EISDIR]     The named file is a directory.

          [EBUSY]      The entry to be unlinked is the mount point for
                       a mounted file system.



     April, 1990                                                     1

     unlink(2)                                               unlink(2)



          [ETXTBSY]    The entry to be unlinked is the last link to a
                       pure procedure (shared text) file that is being
                       executed.

                          Note:  If you are running an NFS system
                          and you are accessing a shared binary re-
                          motely, it is possible that you will not
                          get this errno.


          [EROFS]      The directory entry to be unlinked is part of a
                       read-only file system.

          [EFAULT]     path points outside the process's allocated ad-
                       dress space.

     SEE ALSO
          rm(1), rmdir(1), close(2), link(2), open(2), rmdir(2).





































     2                                                     April, 1990