[mehrdadn]

"Reachable" doesn't mean "openable". Reachable just means there is a path that the system identifies the file with. There are files you cannot open but which are nevertheless reachable by path. Lots of reasons can exist for this and a pending delete is just one of them. Others can include having wrong permissions or being special files (e.g. hiberfil.sys or even $MFTMirr).

[asveikau]

I would be kind of surprised if "the system" cares much about the name of a delete pending file. NT philosophy is to discard the name as soon as possible and work with handles. I was under the impression that ntfs.sys only has this behavior because older filesystems led everybody to expect it.

[mehrdadn]

Well if you look at the scenario you described, I don't believe the parent folder can be deleted while the child is pending deletion. And if the system crashes, I'd expect the file to be there (but haven't tested). So the path components do have to be kept around somewhere...

[asveikau]

It's true that NT won't let you remove a directory if a child has a handle open. But I suspect you are getting the reasoning backwards. The directory is not empty as long as that delete pending file is there. Remove this ill-conceived implementation detail (and it is that) then this and other problems go away.

There is also an API that retrieves a filename from a handle. I don't think it guarantees the name be usable though.

It's easy to imagine a system that works the way I would have it, because it exists: Unix. You can unlink and keep descriptors open. NT is very close to being there too, except for these goofy quirks which are kind of artificial.