navigation map

Chapters:
  1: Introduction
  2: Simple example
  3: Invocation
  4: Finer Control
  5: X-Y Plots
  6: Contour Plots
  7: Image Plots
  8: Examples
  9: Gri Commands
  10: Programming
  11: Environment
  12: Emacs Mode
  13: History
  14: Installation
  15: Gri Bugs
  16: Test Suite
  17: Gri in Press
  18: Acknowledgments
  19: License

Indices:
  Concepts
  Commands
  Variables
index.html#Top ListOfGriCommands.html#ListOfGriCommands Gri: `system' command Gri: `while' command index.html#Top Gri: `while' command

9.3.51: `unlink'


`unlink \filename'
Delete a filename and possibly the file to which it refers. On non-unix machines, this simply means to delete the file. On unix machines, the action is more subtle. The unix OS permits several processes to use a given file at once. Therefore, `unlink' doesn't immediately remove the file, but instead waits until other processes are done with it. Most users will never realize the difference, however, and it is safe to think of `unlink' as simply removing the file. To learn more, type `man unlink' in a unix shell.

A common use of `unlink' is to remove files that were created with the `tmpname' facility (see Using OS Inside Gri), e.g.

\tmp = tmpname
# do some system commands to put data into this file
open \tmp
read columns x y
draw curve
unlink \tmp

navigation map