Re: [PATCH] Do _not_ call unlink on a directory

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Date: Jul 16, 2007, 20:34 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.0.999.0707161332280.20061@woody.linux-foundation.org>
In-Reply-To: <20070716202550.GH16878@cip.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>

On Mon, 16 Jul 2007, Thomas Glanzmann wrote:

Show 9 quoted lines

>
> Hello,
> 
> > > is there a reason why we call unlink and not remove?
> 
> > Exactly because we only want to remove _files_.
> 
> of course. That is the whole point. Call unlink for files, rmdir for
> directories.

No, but we don't *want* the "rmdir for directories" part!

That's the whole point.

Calling "remove()" would be *wrong*. We want the *sane* "unlink()" behaviour, where it only removes files, and returns an error for directories.

		Linus