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Deleting Files (lemmy.ml)
submitted 1 week ago by cm0002@sh.itjust.works to c/programmer_humor@programming.dev
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[-] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 2 days ago

Good to know, and helps me understand code dealing with filesystems a little better. I'm curious how the kernel keeps track of it all, just a counter maybe?

On Linux/Unix you don’t delete the file, you just delete it’s name, which is merely a link to the actual file.

Is that different on other systems?

[-] brotundspiele@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 days ago

I don't know how NTFS does it, but on FAT filesystems the directory table contains the filename along with all the other file metadata (access rights, creation date, size, etc). Only the list of sectors containing the actual data is separate. That means that you can't have two filenames for the same file on FAT filesystems.

If you want to learn more about this, the data structure UNIX filesystems use, and FAT filesystems lack is called inode.

this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2025
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