What happens during an unlink(2)

[Jerry Aguirre]

Regarding the proposal for an option to "rm" or unlink(2) to zero
discarded disk blocks for security reasons.

I hope that "rm" or unlink(2) is going to check st_nlinks before doing
this.  Remember that removing a file will only deallocate the data if
the name being removed is the LAST link to the file.

Before 4.2BSD rename(2) the only way to rename a file was to link(2) a
new name and then unlink(2) the old one.  I would hate to have files
zeroed everytime I did a "mv".

					Jerry Aguirre @ Olivetti ATC
{hplabs|fortune|idi|ihnp4|tolerant|allegra|glacier|olhqma}!oliveb!jerry