On Sat, Nov 17, 2001 at 09:55:23AM -0800, John M McIntosh wrote:
> Some testing showed a problem under OS-X which I believe is Unix 
> related and I think I know the answer however I'll ask here to 
> confirm things. Also hoping to get some more feedback on testing?
> 
> The issue is that 2 tests fail under OS-X which is based on BSD unix 
> because I believe it's ok to delete a file even if it is open. Under 
> OS-9 the delete fails because the file is open. However I suspect 
> that Unix allows you to delete an open file without complaints.

Yes, you can delete an open file on a Unix system. The file is not
really deleted, but its name is removed from a directory. When
all open references to the file go away, then the file is really
deleted. This is analogous to an object which does not get garbage
collected until all references to the object are gone.