Difference between unlink and rm on unix
Whats the real different between these two commands? Why is the system call to delete a file called unlink instead of delete ? Eliyahu Skoczylas You need to understand a bit about the original Unix file system to understand this very important question. Unlike other operating systems of its era (late 60s, early 70s) Unix did not store the file name together with the actual directory information (of where the file was stored on the disks.) Instead, Unix created a separate " Inode table " to contain the directory information, and identify the actual file, and then allowed separate text files to