in reply to Re: Correct code for deleting old file?
in thread Correct code for deleting old file?

I'm not sure about this. My information may be a bit out of date.

Calling unlink on some non-file types (directory or similar) still has "unspecified" consequences on some operating systems, hasn't it? And -e only checks for existence, whereas -f would check specifically for a file, making the call to unlink safer, right?

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Re^3: Correct code for deleting old file?
by rovf (Priest) on Jun 18, 2012 at 08:16 UTC
    Basically i agree with you. I had assumed that you from your knowledge of your application, you know for sure that the names which you had collected in your file list, certainly contain plain files (and not directories, symbolic links or what else). In this case (only) it makes sense to omit the file testing.

    If this is not the case, I personally would be interested *which* non-file entries made it into the file list, because this (possibly) signals an error. In this case, I would do a -f test for each file, but I would also issue an error message for those entries which are not plain files.

    -- 
    Ronald Fischer <ynnor@mm.st>
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      Thanks for the clarification.

      I'm not the OP. I was just curious. I've been avoiding unlink for non-files for something like a decade now. For a nanosecond there i thought maybe someone actually managed to to fix unlink in libc ;-)

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