The (rnrs files (6)) library provides a minimal set of procedures useful in many programs: The file-exists? procedure allows a program to detect the presence of a file if it is going to overwrite it, and delete-file allows taking the appropriate action if the old file is no longer useful.
Standardization of procedures that return or pass to another procedure the name of a file is more difficult than standardization of file-exists? and delete-file, because strings are either awkward or in sufficient to represent file names on some platforms, such as Unix and Windows. See section 20.1.