1.\" Copyright (c) 1980, 1991 Regents of the University of California. 2.\" All rights reserved. 3.\" 4.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without 5.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions 6.\" are met: 7.\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright 8.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 9.\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright 10.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the 11.\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 12.\" 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software 13.\" must display the following acknowledgement: 14.\" This product includes software developed by the University of 15.\" California, Berkeley and its contributors. 16.\" 4. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors 17.\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software 18.\" without specific prior written permission. 19.\" 20.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND 21.\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE 22.\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE 23.\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE 24.\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL 25.\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS 26.\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) 27.\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT 28.\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY 29.\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF 30.\" SUCH DAMAGE. 31.\" 32.\" from: @(#)unlink.2 6.3 (Berkeley) 3/10/91 33.\" $Id: unlink.2,v 1.3 1993/11/25 00:40:00 jtc Exp $ 34.\" 35.Dd March 10, 1991 36.Dt UNLINK 2 37.Os BSD 4 38.Sh NAME 39.Nm unlink 40.Nd remove directory entry 41.Sh SYNOPSIS 42.Fd #include <unistd.h> 43.Ft int 44.Fn unlink "const char *path" 45.Sh DESCRIPTION 46The 47.Fn unlink 48function 49removes the link named by 50.Fa path 51from its directory and decrements the link count of the 52file which was referenced by the link. 53If that decrement reduces the link count of the file 54to zero, 55and no process has the file open, then 56all resources associated with the file are reclaimed. 57If one or more process have the file open when the last link is removed, 58the link is removed, but the removal of the file is delayed until 59all references to it have been closed. 60.Sh RETURN VALUES 61Upon successful completion, a value of 0 is returned. 62Otherwise, a value of -1 is returned and 63.Va errno 64is set to indicate the error. 65.Sh ERRORS 66The 67.Fn unlink 68succeeds unless: 69.Bl -tag -width ENAMETOOLONGAA 70.It Bq Er ENOTDIR 71A component of the path prefix is not a directory. 72.It Bq Er EINVAL 73The pathname contains a character with the high-order bit set. 74.It Bq Er ENAMETOOLONG 75A component of a pathname exceeded 255 characters, 76or an entire path name exceeded 1023 characters. 77.It Bq Er ENOENT 78The named file does not exist. 79.It Bq Er EACCES 80Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix. 81.It Bq Er EACCES 82Write permission is denied on the directory containing the link 83to be removed. 84.It Bq Er ELOOP 85Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname. 86.It Bq Er EPERM 87The named file is a directory and the effective user ID 88of the process is not the super-user. 89.It Bq Er EPERM 90The directory containing the file is marked sticky, 91and neither the containing directory nor the file to be removed 92are owned by the effective user ID. 93.It Bq Er EBUSY 94The entry to be unlinked is the mount point for a 95mounted file system. 96.It Bq Er EIO 97An I/O error occurred while deleting the directory entry 98or deallocating the inode. 99.It Bq Er EROFS 100The named file resides on a read-only file system. 101.It Bq Er EFAULT 102.Fa Path 103points outside the process's allocated address space. 104.El 105.Sh SEE ALSO 106.Xr close 2 , 107.Xr link 2 , 108.Xr rmdir 2 109.Sh HISTORY 110An 111.Fn unlink 112function call appeared in 113.At v6 . 114