unlink

English

Etymology

un- +‎ link

Verb

unlink (third-person singular simple present unlinks, present participle unlinking, simple past and past participle unlinked)

1. (transitive) To decouple; to remove a link from, or separate the links of.
2. (transitive, computing, Unix) To delete (a file).
   • 2001, Tom Phoenix, Randal L. Schwartz, Learning Perl, "O'Reilly Media, Inc.", →ISBN, page 175:

     That's because the permission to unlink a file doesn't depend upon the permission bits on the file itself; it's the permission bits on the directory that contains the file that matter.

Translations

to decouple an item

• Bulgarian: отцепвам (bg) (otcepvam), отсъединявам (otsǎedinjavam)
• Esperanto: malligi
• Hungarian: leválaszt (hu), szétválaszt (hu)
• Maori: wetehono
• Portuguese: desligar (pt), desvincular
• Russian: отсоединить (ru) pf (otsojedinitʹ), отсоединять (ru) impf (otsojedinjatʹ)

to delete a file

Noun

unlink (plural unlinks)

1. (mathematics, knot theory) A link that is equivalent (under ambient isotopy) to finitely many disjoint circles in the plane.