Del (command)

In computing, del (or erase) is a command in command-line interpreters (shells) 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.

del / erase
The ReactOS del command
Developers	DEC, Microware, Microsoft, IBM, DR, Datalight, Novell, JP Software, ReactOS Contributors
Operating system	RT-11, OS/8, RSX-11, OpenVMS, DOS, OS-9, MSX-DOS, FlexOS, SISNE plus, OS/2, Windows, ReactOS, KolibriOS, SymbOS, DexOS
Platform	Cross-platform
Type	Command

Implementations

The command is available for various operating systems including DOS, Microware OS-9,^[1] IBM OS/2,^[2] Microsoft Windows^[3] and ReactOS.^[4] It is analogous to the Unix rm command and to the Stratus OpenVOS delete_file and delete_dircommands.^[5]

DEC RT-11,^[6] OS/8,^[7] RSX-11,^[8] and OpenVMS^[9] also provide the delete command which can be contracted to del. AmigaDOS^[10] and TSC FLEX^[11] provide a delete command as well.

The erase command is supported by Tim Paterson's SCP 86-DOS.^[12] On MS-DOS, the command is available in versions 1 and later.^[13] It is also available in the open-source MS-DOS emulator DOSBox.

Datalight ROM-DOS also includes an implementation of the del and erase commands.^[14]

While Digital Research 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 (for 'Query') given as well.^[15]

THEOS/OASIS^[16] and FlexOS^[17] 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

See also

• deltree
• rmdir
• List of DOS commands
• List of Unix commands