There seem to be a number of ways to skin this cat. Some possibilities would include:

1. a cron job that deletes all zero byte files which have not been modified for x hours/days/weeks

2. flock()ing your files so that ones in use can not be unlinked. This requires you to add code to all the applications that access the files.

3. If you use 'open FILE, ">>log"' then log is created if it does not exist so I really don't understand what you mean when you say you only create them once. You can create them on the fly, on an as needed basis. You would thus not create the problem files in the first place.

tachyon

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