About
delete is a file system operation that will delete a file.
Deleting Byte
Because the unit of persistent on a file system is the file, you can't delete byte.
If you want to delete byte of your files physically with a file system, you need to:
- recreate a new one.
- or manage a ledger of the status of your byte (ie deleted or not)
Ledger
A ledger is a logical layer of your application above a file system that tracks the status of your data block (deleted or not) so that you don't need to recreate a file for each delete.
The procedure is:
- you write your data in file by blocks
- you keep the location of this block in a ledger with their status
- you mark this blocks as deleted
- you overwrite the delete block with new data.
Database application implements this kind of logic.