Xref: utzoo comp.unix.questions:8204 comp.unix.wizards:9883 comp.sys.apollo:1117 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!osu-cis!att!occrsh!rjd From: rjd@occrsh.ATT.COM (Randy_Davis) Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,comp.unix.wizards,comp.sys.apollo Subject: Re: File space allocation/deallocation under Unix (BSD4.x) Keywords: Unix, BSD, File, Delete Message-ID: <296@occrsh.ATT.COM> Date: 13 Jul 88 13:38:28 GMT References: <9662@eddie.MIT.EDU> Reply-To: rjd@occrsh.UUCP Organization: AT&T Network & Data Systems, OKC Lines: 22 In article <9662@eddie.MIT.EDU> rich@eddie.MIT.EDU (Richard Caloggero) writes: : If you create a directory "d", then create a file "d/f" 1 megabyte :long (big), then "rm d/f", is it true that the space remains allocated :to directory "d" and cannot be garbage collected or otherwise reclaimed :until another file is created in directory "d" or "d" is deleted? If this is true, why? What good does it do to delete files, say, in your home directory :(if, for example, disk resources are low and you system administrator :keeps hounding you to "clean up your directory")? : -- Rich (rich@eddie.mit.edu). When you remove the file, the space taken by the file *contents* is reclaimed, i.e., the 1 megabye above is available for system use again. The 16 bytes (for System V) taken by the file entry in the directory "file" is *not* reclaimed unless you remove the directory. To explain the directory part further: if you make the directory then ls -al the directory, you will see that the directory entry, ".", takes up 32 bytes of space; 16 bytes for the "." entry, and 16 bytes for the ".." entry (you can check this under System V via the 'od -c .' command). If you create a file under this directory, the directory "file" will increase by 16 bytes to 48 bytes. If you then remove this file, the directory "file" does *not* reduce by 16 bytes.... Randy