del Command Examples

Delete one or more files. In PowerShell, this command is an alias of Remove-Item. This documentation is based on the Command Prompt (cmd) version of del. More information: https://learn.microsoft.com/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/del.

• View the documentation of the equivalent PowerShell command:

tldr remove-item

• Delete one or more files or patterns:

del {{file_pattern1 file_pattern2 ...}}

• Prompt for confirmation before deleting each file:

del {{file_pattern}} /p

• Force the deletion of read-only files:

del {{file_pattern}} /f

• Recursively delete file(s) from all subdirectories:

del {{file_pattern}} /s

• Do not prompt when deleting files based on a global wildcard:

del {{file_pattern}} /q

• Display the help and list available attributes:

del /?

• Delete files based on specified attributes:

del {{file_pattern}} /a {{attribute}}