R: Delete Files and Directories

unlink {base} | R Documentation

## Delete Files and Directories

### Description

`unlink` deletes the file(s) or directories specified by `x`.

### Usage

    unlink(x, recursive = FALSE, force = FALSE, expand = TRUE)

### Arguments

`x` | a character vector with the names of the file(s) or directories to be deleted.
`recursive` | logical. Should directories be deleted recursively?
`force` | logical. Should permissions be changed (if possible) to allow the file or directory to be removed?
`expand` | logical. Should wildcards (see ‘Details’ below) and tilde (see `path.expand`) be expanded?

### Details

If `recursive = FALSE` directories are not deleted, not even empty ones.

Wildcard expansion (normally ‘*’ and ‘?’ are allowed) is done by the internal code of `Sys.glob`. Wildcards never match a leading ‘.’ in the filename, and files ‘.’, ‘..’ and ‘~’ will never be considered for deletion.

### Value

`0` for success, `1` for failure, invisibly. Not deleting a non-existent file is not a failure, nor is being unable to delete a directory if `recursive = FALSE`. However, missing values in `x` are regarded as failures.

### References

Becker, R. A., Chambers, J. M. and Wilks, A. R. (1988) The New S Language. Wadsworth & Brooks/Cole.

### See Also

`file.remove`.

[Package base version 4.0.5 Index]