unlink (Unix)

This article is about the Unix system call. For the mathematical concept, see unlink.

In Unix-like operating systems, unlink is a system call and a command line utility to delete files. The program directly interfaces the system call, which removes the file name and (but not on GNU systems) directories like rm and rmdir.^[1] If the file name was the last hard link to the file, the file itself is deleted as soon as no program has it open.^[2]

It also appears in the PHP, Node.js and Perl programming languages in the form of the unlink() built-in function. Like the Unix utility, it is also used to delete files.^[3]^[4]

Example

To delete a file named foo, one could type:

   % unlink foo

In PHP, one could use the following function to do the same:

   unlink("foo");

The Perl syntax is identical to the PHP syntax, save for the parentheses:

   unlink "foo";

In Node.js it is almost the same as the others:

   fs.unlink("foo", callback);

References

Unix command-line interface programs and shell builtins

File system	cat chmod chown chgrp cksum cmp cp dd du df file fsck fuser ln ls mkdir mount mv pax pwd rm rmdir split tee touch type umask

Processes	at bg chroot cron fg kill killall nice pgrep pkill ps pstree time top

User environment	clear env exit finger history logname mesg passwd su sudo uptime talk tput uname w wall who whoami write

Text processing	awk banner basename comm csplit cut diff dirname ed ex fmt fold head iconv join less more nl paste printf sed sort spell strings tail tr uniq vi wc xargs yes

Shell builtins	alias cd echo test unset wait

Networking	dig host ifconfig inetd netcat netstat nslookup ping rdate rlogin route ssh traceroute

Searching	find grep locate whatis whereis

Documentation	apropos help man

Miscellaneous	bc dc cal expr lp od sleep true and false

List of Unix commands

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unlink (Unix)

Example

References

See also