del (command)

In computing, del (or erase) is a command in various DOS, OS/2 and Microsoft Windows command line interpreters (shells) such as COMMAND.COM, cmd.exe, 4DOS/4NT and Windows PowerShell. It is used to delete one or more files or directories from a filesystem. It is analogous to the Unix rm command. RT-11, RSX-11 and OpenVMS also provide the delete command which can be contracted to del.

In Windows PowerShell, del and erase are a predefined command aliases for the Remove-Item cmdlet which basically serves the same purpose.

Example

del filename
erase filename

See also

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

References