UNLINK(2)						      BSD System Calls Manual							 UNLINK(2)

NAME

     unlink -- remove directory entry

LIBRARY

     Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS

     #include <unistd.h>

     int
     unlink(const char *path);

DESCRIPTION

     The unlink() function removes the link named by path from its directory and decrements the link count of the file which was referenced by the
     link.  If that decrement reduces the link count of the file to zero, and no process has the file open, then all resources associated with the
     file are reclaimed.  If one or more process have the file open when the last link is removed, the link is removed, but the removal of the
     file is delayed until all references to it have been closed.

RETURN VALUES

     Upon successful completion, a value of 0 is returned.  Otherwise, a value of -1 is returned and errno is set to indicate the error.

ERRORS

     The unlink() succeeds unless:

     [EACCES]		Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix, or write permission is denied on the directory containing
			the link to be removed.

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

     [EFAULT]		path points outside the process's allocated address space.

     [EIO]		An I/O error occurred while deleting the directory entry or deallocating the inode.

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

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

     [ENOENT]		The named file does not exist.

     [ENOTDIR]		A component of the path prefix is not a directory.

     [EPERM]		The named file is a directory and the effective user ID of the process is not the super-user, the file system containing
			the file does not permit the use of unlink() on a directory, or the directory containing the file is marked sticky, and
			neither the containing directory nor the file to be removed are owned by the effective user ID.

     [EROFS]		The named file resides on a read-only file system.

SEE ALSO

     close(2), link(2), rmdir(2), symlink(7)

STANDARDS

     The unlink() function conforms to ISO/IEC 9945-1:1990 (``POSIX.1'').

HISTORY

     An unlink() function call appeared in Version 2 AT&T UNIX.

BSD
								   April 3, 2010							       BSD