del (command)

In computing, del (or erase) is a command in all DOS, OS/2 and Microsoft Windows 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 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.

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 (for 'Query') given as well.

Syntax

del filename
erase filename

See also

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