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Message ID: 3035     Entry time: 05 May 2025
Author: Konstantin Olchanski 
Topic: Info 
Subject: db_delete_key(TRUE) 
I was working on an odb corruption crash inside db_delete_key() and I noticed 
that I did not test db_delete_key() with follow_links set to TRUE. Then I noticed 
that nobody nowhere seems to use db_delete_key() with follow_links set to TRUE. 

Instead of testing it, can I just remove it?

This feature existed since day 1 (1st commit) and it does something unexpected 
compared to filesystem "/bin/rm": the best I can tell, it is removes the link 
*and* whatever the link points to. For people familiar with "/bin/rm", this is 
somewhat unexpected and by my thinking, if nobody ever added such a feature to 
"/bin/rm", it is probably not considered generally useful or desirable. (I would 
think it dangerous, it removes not 1 but 2 files, the 2nd file would be in some 
other directory far away from where we are).

By this thinking, I should remove "follow_links" (actually just make it do thing 
, to reduce the disturbance to other source code). db_delete_key() should work 
similar to /bin/rm aka the unlink() syscall.

K.O.
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