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rm behaviour when file in use by Windows app?
- From: Lloyd Wood <L dot Wood at surrey dot ac dot uk>
- To: cygwin at cygwin dot com
- Cc: Lloyd Wood <L dot Wood at surrey dot ac dot uk>
- Date: Mon, 1 Sep 2008 11:29:16 +0100
- Subject: rm behaviour when file in use by Windows app?
I have a question about rm behaviour when the file rm'd is already in
use by a Windows app. I've looked through the rm manpage/info, but
that's just the usual GNU stuff; nothing cygwin-specific.
Let's say I'm using the cygwin bash shell to tidy up a directory of
Acrobat pdfs. I do
rm foo.pdf
but as foo.pdf is already open in the Windows Acrobat reader, nothing
happens. No error message is given. If I ls, I can still see foo.pdf.
Later, I close foo.pdf in Reader. foo.pdf then immediately and
silently vanishes from the file system.
I'm having trouble understanding what happens here. Does the rm for
foo.pdf get queued up somewhere, but is blocked by Acrobat's use? Is
this the most sensible behaviour?
thanks,
L.
<http://info.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/L.Wood/><L.Wood@surrey.ac.uk>
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