unlink(2)unlink(2)Nameunlink - remove directory entry
Syntaxunlink(path)
char *path;
Description
The system call removes the entry for the file path from its directory.
If this entry was the last link to the file, and no process has the
file open, then all resources associated with the file are reclaimed.
If, however, the file was open in any process, the actual resource
reclamation is delayed until it is closed, even though the directory
entry has disappeared.
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.
Diagnostics
The system call succeeds unless:
[ENOTDIR] A component of the path prefix is not a directory.
[ENOENT] The named file does not exist or path points to an empty
string and the environment defined is POSIX or SYS‐
TEM_FIVE.
[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.
[EBUSY] The entry to be unlinked is the mount point for a
mounted file system.
[EROFS] The named file resides on a read-only file system.
[EFAULT] The path points outside the process's allocated address
space.
[ELOOP] Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating
the pathname.
[ENAMETOOLONG] A component of a pathname exceeded 255 characters, or an
entire pathname exceeded 1023 characters.
[EPERM] The named file is a directory and the effective user ID
of the process is not the superuser.
[EPERM] The named file is a directory and the environment is
defined is POSIX.
[EPERM] 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.
[EIO] An I/O error occurred while deleting the directory entry
or deallocating the inode.
[ETIMEDOUT] A connect request or remote file operation failed,
because the connected party did not properly respond
after a period of time that is dependent on the communi‐
cations protocol.
[ETXTBSY] The named file is the last link to a shared text exe‐
cutable and the environment defined is POSIX or SYS‐
TEM_FIVE.
Environment
Differs from the System V definition in that ELOOP is a possible error
condition.
See Alsoclose(2), link(2), rmdir(2)unlink(2)