[cafxx]

...or maybe Windows should just offer an API for marking a file for deletion once it's not in use anymore (I understand unlink semantics may not be possible, but that's not what my suggestion above is saying)

[CodeHz]

Windows do have this API, NtDeleteFile, AND it could be used to delete current running exe. https://twitter.com/jonaslyk/status/1345167613643661312 but it is undocumented...

[fodkodrasz]

I thought I'll be the guy to point out that once again mandatory file locking is to blame, but you beat me to it.

I never digged into the question, but why is it used, what benefits did it provide over the UNIX unlink behaviour?

[dataflow]

> I never digged into the question, but why is it used, what benefits did it provide over the UNIX unlink behaviour?

How do you defragment/move files that are unreachable on the file system? How do you shrink volumes when you can't move files that need to be moved?

Edit: Actually, hmm... as I type this, I suddenly recall you can also open a file by its ID on NTFS. And you can enumerate its streams as well. So presumably this could work on NTFS if you loop through all file IDs? Though then that would make these files still accessible, not truly unreachable.

[pjmlp]

Locking mechanism that actually works, like in any sane OS besides UNIX.

And with it, less data corruption issues.