_unlink, _wunlink

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Header File

stdio.h

Category

Input/output Routines

Prototype

int _unlink(const char *filename);

int _wunlink(const wchar_t *filename);

Description

Deletes a file.

_unlink deletes a file specified by filename. Any drive, path, and file name can be used as a filename. Wildcards are not allowed.

Read-only files cannot be deleted by this call. To remove read-only files, first use chmod or _rtl_chmod to change the read-only attribute.

Note: If the file is open, it must be closed before unlinking it.

_wunlink is the Unicode version of _wunlink. The Unicode version accepts a filename that is a wchar_t character string. Otherwise, the functions perform identically.

Return Value

On success, _unlink returns 0.

On error, it returns -1 and sets the global variable errno to one of the following values:

EACCES	Permission denied
ENOENT	Path or file name not found

Example

#include <stdio.h>
#include <io.h>
int main(void)
{
   FILE *fp = fopen("junk.jnk","w");
   int status;
   fprintf(fp,"junk");
   status = access("junk.jnk",0);
   if (status == 0)
      printf("File exists\n");
   else
      printf("File doesn't exist\n");
   fclose(fp);
   unlink("junk.jnk");
   status = access("junk.jnk",0);
   if (status == 0)
      printf("File exists\n");
   else
      printf("File doesn't exist\n");
   return 0;
}

Portability

	POSIX	Win32	ANSI C	ANSI C++
_unlink	+	+
_wunlink		NT only