Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!topaz.rutgers.edu!ron From: ron@topaz.rutgers.edu.UUCP Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: Bug in Ultrix2.0? Message-ID: <16731@topaz.rutgers.edu> Date: Sun, 29-Nov-87 10:41:01 EST Article-I.D.: topaz.16731 Posted: Sun Nov 29 10:41:01 1987 Date-Received: Tue, 1-Dec-87 06:49:31 EST References: <10570@brl-adm.ARPA> Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 10 The whole purpose of "unlink" as opposed to "rm" is to get around all these nice consistency checks like "file is a directory" that rm does for you. Linking and unlinking directories makes a mess of your file system topology, and hence it is reserved for the superuser. Rmdir verifies that the directory is empty before removing it, and it also removes the links for . and .. (well at least ..) before blowing things away. Unlinking a directory causes small parts of your filesystem (still allocated) to drift away so that no one can access them. -Ron