How do the UNIX commands mv and rm work with open files?

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Unix filesystems use reference counting and a two-layer architecture for finding files.

The filename refers to something called an inode, for information node or index node. The inode stores (a pointer to) the file contents as well as some metadata, such as the file’s type (ordinary, directory, device, etc.) and who owns it.

Multiple filenames can refer to the same inode; they are then called hard links. In addition, a file descriptor (fd) refers to an inode. An fd is the type of object a process gets when it opens a file.

A file in a Unix filesystem only disappears when the last reference to it is gone, so when there are no more names (hard links) or fd’s referencing it. So, rm does not actually remove a file; it removes a reference to a file.

This filesystem setup may seem confusing and it sometimes poses problems (esp. with NFS), but it has the benefit that locking is not necessary for a lot of applications. Many Unix programs also use the situation to their advantage by opening a temporary file and deleting it immediately after. As soon as they terminate, even if they crash, the temporary file is gone.

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