Question, so hypothetically, you can unlink (delete) a file and the data isn't gone, just the filename (reference) to the inode number. I don't think it's too far fetched to think that a new filename reference could be made to link to that specific inode (assuming you know the number), ergo recovering the file.

also assuming that the inode hasn't been overwritten. and even better is there a way to do this in perl, (i.e. perl grabs through every unlinked inode and creates a link to it as a rough type of data recovery).