unlink                 package:base                 R Documentation

Delete Files and Directories

Description:

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

Usage:

     unlink(x, recursive = FALSE)

Arguments:

       x: a character vector with the names of the file(s) or
          directories to be deleted. Wildcards (normally '*' and '?')
          are allowed.

recursive: logical. Should directories be deleted recursively?

Details:

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

     On most platforms 'file' includes symbolic links, fifos and
     sockets.

     Wildcard expansion 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. Wildcards will
     only be expanded if the system supports it.  Most systems will
     support not only '*' and '?') but character classes such as
     '[a-z]' (see the 'man' pages for 'glob').  The metacharacters '* ?
     [' can occur in Unix filenames, and this makes it difficult to use
     'unlink' to delete such files (see  'file.remove'), although
     escaping the metacharacters by backslashes usually works.  As from
     R 2.8.0, if a metacharacter matches nothing it is considered as a
     literal character.

     'recursive = TRUE' is not supported on all platforms, and may be
     ignored, with a warning.

Value:

     '0' for success, '1' for failure. 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' result 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'.

