is unlinking actually deleting?

[doomed_toast]

Ok this might seem like a strange question but while doing some advanced stuff(lots of unlinking,renaming,copying all at once) some unlinked files seemed to pop up again. And i remember reading somewhere that unlinking makes the system forget about the file or something so maybe some of you can shed some light on this. And then how do i really really delete something?

[Weedpacket]

Yes, unlinking is the same as deleting. Yes, it means that the OS (more accurately, the filesystem) stops tracking the file and marks the locations on the disk where it is stored as empty. It's called unlinking because (a) "delete" is ambiguous, and (b) on Un*x systems at least, one file can have multiple links.

It's more likely you're just getting mixed up about what's going on with all those file operations.

[doomed_toast]

nope i had several people look at my code nobody seems to find the problem