This is in reference to the answer here , since I received no response to my question in the comments.
What it really means is that a file entry was created in the /dev/ashmem/ directory, then later removed, but that the corresponding i-node still exists because there is at least one open file-descriptor for it
What does this mean in *nix terms ? AFAIK, Android is of ext4 type. I knew that in some file systems the inode structure retains the data after the file is deleted and in some the contents of the structure are reset. But what does the above statement mean? If the file entry is deleted, how is there at least one open file-descriptor still open ? There's no hard-link or soft-link here.
After lot of digging with mmap and file deletions, this answers (no self-promotion) helps me understand the concept.