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Management of temporary files

Often programs have to generate temporary files or may generate a number of separate files. Temporary files should generally be created in a temporary directory and be deleted before the program exits to avoid filling up the disk. Some operating systems have appropriate standard temporary directories that are automatically purged, often on a daily basis or on system reboot.

Where a process generates several separate output files, such as an HTML document and a number of image files to be included, the main file should be returned as an HTML document with links to the files to be included. These files should be scheduled for deletion in some way, perhaps by spawning a program that delays for a period long enough for the browser to fetch them, and then deletes them and exits. The main HTML document should include an Expires header.

Spinning the Web by Andrew Ford
© 1995 International Thomson Publishing
© 2002 Andrew Ford and Ford & Mason Ltd
Note: this HTML document was generated in December 1994 directly from the LaTeX source files using LaTeX2HTML. It was formatted into our standard page layout using the Template Toolkit. The document is mainly of historical interest as obviously many of the sites mentioned have long since disappeared.