Del (command)
In computing, del
is a command in command-line interpreters such as COMMAND.COM
, cmd.exe
, 4DOS, NDOS, 4OS2, 4NT and Windows PowerShell. It is used to delete one or more files or directories from a file system.Implementations
The command is available for various operating systems including DOS, Microware OS-9, IBM OS/2, Microsoft Windows and ReactOS. It is analogous to the Unix rm
command and to the Stratus OpenVOS delete_file
and delete_dir
commands.
DEC RT-11, RSX-11, OS/8 and OpenVMS also provide the delete
command which can be contracted to del
. AmigaDOS and TSC FLEX provide a delete
command as well.
The erase
command is supported by Tim Paterson's SCP 86-DOS. On MS-DOS, the command is available in versions 1 and later. It is also available in the open-source MS-DOS emulator DOSBox.
While DR-DOS supports del
and erase
as well, it also supports the shorthand form era
, which derived from CP/M. In addition to this, the DR-DOS command processor also supports delq
/eraq
. These are shorthand forms for the del
/era
/erase
command with an assumed /Q
parameter given as well.
THEOS/OASIS and FlexOS provide only the erase
command.
In PowerShell, del
and erase
are predefined command aliases for the Remove-Item
cmdlet which basically serves the same purpose.Syntax
del filename
erase filename