Why no flag to unlink a file on creation?

Why no flag to unlink a file on creation?

[Jann Horn]

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Hello,
I'm not too familiar with the internals of the kernel, so this question
might be stupid, and I'm not sure whether this is the right place to ask
about it, but anyway:
Why is there no flag for the "open" syscall to specify that you want the
file you're opening to be deleted? I think that it would be very useful
in combination with O_CREAT - you could create temporary files without
actually leaving files on the filesystem, given that the filesystem
supports it.

Jann Horn

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Re: Why no flag to unlink a file on creation?

[Carlos O'Donell]

On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 9:29 AM, Jann Horn <jannhorn-gM/Ye1E23mwN+BqQ9rBEUg@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Hello,
> I'm not too familiar with the internals of the kernel, so this question
> might be stupid, and I'm not sure whether this is the right place to ask
> about it, but anyway:
> Why is there no flag for the "open" syscall to specify that you want the
> file you're opening to be deleted? I think that it would be very useful
> in combination with O_CREAT - you could create temporary files without
> actually leaving files on the filesystem, given that the filesystem
> supports it.

The open() function behaviour is dictated both by POSIX and ISO C.

You really want to ask this on either the related C library mailing
list or the related POSIX standards group mailing list.

libc-help-9JcytcrH/bA+uJoB2kUjGw@public.gmane.org - The GNU C Library help mailing list.
* List for discussing GNU C Library issues and ISO C11 questions.
* http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/libc.html

or

austin-group-l-7882/jkIBncuagvECLh61g@public.gmane.org - Austin Common Standards Revision List.
* List for discussing POSIX related issues
* http://www.opengroup.org/austin/lists.html

Cheers,
Carlos.