If you are writing a perl program that needs to unlink a file and also run on VMS then try to keep track of how many distinct times you have opened it for write or append access then unlink the same number of times. The reason for doing so is that the VMS file system provides automatic file versioning, hence if you 
   open FH ">foo.txt";
   print FH "blah"
   close FH;
   open FH1 ">foo.txt";
   print FH1 "blah"
   close FH1;
   unlink "foo.txt"; # `DELETE FOO.TXT;2`
   if ($^O eq 'VMS') { unlink "foo.txt" } # `DELETE FOO.TXT;1`

[download]
Of course if it is difficult or impossible to know how many times a file has been opened for writing or appending (such as often is the case with temp files or regression test output cleanup) then there is a strange little idiom that works on VMS and all other perl implementations (such as Unix): 
   1 while unlink $filename;

[download]
Gets rid of it.

In reply to Re: deleting a file by Anonymous Monk
in thread deleting a file by Anonymous Monk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.