Guardian Procedure Calls Reference Manual

Considerations
• Purging a file audited by the Transaction Management Facility (TMF) subsystem
If the file is audited by the TMF subsystem and if there are pending transaction-mode record
locks or file locks, any attempt to purge the file fails with file-system error 12, whether or not
openers of the file still exist.
When an audited file is purged, all corresponding dump records are deleted from the TMF
catalog. If the TMF subsystem is not active, attempts to purge an audited file fail with file-system
error 82.
• Purging a partitioned file
When you purge the primary partition of a partitioned file, the file system automatically purges
all the other partitions located anywhere in the network that are marked as secondary partitions.
A secondary partition is marked as such if it is created at the same time as the primary partition.
• Security consideration
When a file is purged, the data is not necessarily overwritten or erased, but pointers are
changed to show the data to be absent. For security reasons, you might want to set the
CLEARONPURGE flag for a file, using either function 1 of the SETMODE procedure or the
File Utility Program (FUP) SECURE command. This flag causes all data to be physically erased
(overwritten with zeros) when the file is purged.
• Expiration dates
FILE_PURGE_ checks the expiration time of a file before purging it. If the expiration time is
later than the current time, FILE_PURGE_ does not purge the file and returns file-system error
1091.
• Support for format 2 key-sequenced files with increased limits
FILE_PURGE_ can be used to delete format 2 key-sequenced files with increased limits that
are not open in H06.28/J06.17 RVUs with specific SPRs and later RVUs; the behavior of the
API is unchanged. (For a list of the required H06.28/J06.17 SPRs, see SPR Requirements for
Increased Enscribe Limits for the H06.28/J06.17 Release (page 31).)
OSS Considerations
This procedure operates only on Guardian objects. If an OSS file is specified, error 1163 is
returned.
Example
error := FILE_PURGE_ ( old^filename : old^filename^length );
Related Programming Manuals
For programming information about the FILE_PURGE_ procedure, see the Guardian Programmer's
Guide.
474 Guardian Procedure Calls (F)