How to remove a file in C program?

Question

How do I close a file and remove it?

I have the following code:

FILE *filePtr = fopen("fileName", "w");
...

Now I want to close filePtr and remove the file "fileName".

Should I:

fclose(filePtr);
remove("fileName");

Or:

remove("fileName");
fclose(filePtr);

Does it matter which I do first?

Thanks!!

Answer 1

That is OS-dependent. On *nix, deleting an open file leaves it open and the data on disk, but removes the filename from the filesystem, and actually deletes the file on close; some other operating systems may not let you delete an open file at all. Therefore the former is recommended for maximum portability.

Answer 2

It makes more sense to fclose and then unlink.

Answer 3

You do not need to fopen a file to remove it. But, in linux, if you remove an fopened file, it will be deleted only after closing it. You can still read/write to it.

Answer 4

As man unlink(2) says (for Unix systems) :

The unlink() function removes the link named by path from its directory and decrements the link count of the file which was referenced by the link. If that decrement reduces the link count of the file to zero, and no process has the file open, then all resources associated with the file are reclaimed. If one or more process have the file open when the last link is removed, the link is removed, but the removal of the file is delayed until all references to it have been closed.

So the order doesn't matter at all.