Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rice!sun-spots-request
From: falk@peregrine.eng.sun.com (Ed Falk)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun
Subject: Re: Confused about a file with no links
Keywords: Miscellaneous
Message-ID: <10045@brazos.Rice.edu>
Date: 18 Jul 90 19:15:38 GMT
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X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 9, Issue 268, message 7

In article <9952@brazos.Rice.edu> jes@mbio.med.upenn.edu (Joe Smith) writes:

>As the 'NLK' field is supposed to be the number of links to the file (and
>NLK agrees with ls for other files which I could find directory entries
>for) I am curious as to what a file with no links is and what conditions
>create them.

Well, you could delete a file that some program has open.  It doesn't go
away until it's closed, but it has no links.  I suppose that could be it.

Many programs that create temporary files delete them right away so the
file will go away as soon as the program exits.  The advantage to this is
that if the program exits abnormally, it won't leave its temporary file
lying around.

	-ed falk, sun microsystems -- sun!falk, falk@sun.com