# Ant User Manual

## Delete

### Description

Deletes either a single file, all files in a specified directory and its sub-directories, or a set of files specified by one or more FileSets. When specifying a set of files, empty directories are not removed by default. To remove empty directories, use the includeEmptyDirs atribute.

### Parameters

Attribute | Description | Required
file | The file to delete. | at least one of the two
dir | The directory to delete files from.
verbose | Show name of each deleted file ("true"/"false"). Default is "false" when omitted. | No

quiet

If the file does not exist, do not display a diagnostic message or modify the exit status to reflect an error (unless Ant has been invoked with the -verbose or -debug switches). This means that if a file or directory cannot be deleted, then no error is reported. This setting emulates the -f option to the Unix "rm" command. ("true"/"false"). Default is "false" meaning things are "noisy".

No

includeEmptyDirs | Set to "true" to delete empty directories when using filesets. Default is "false". | No
includes | Deprecated. Comma separated list of patterns of files that must be deleted. All files are in the current directory and any sub-directories are deleted when omitted. | No
includesfile | Deprecated. The name of a file. Each line of this file is taken to be an include pattern | No
excludes | Deprecated. Comma separated list of patterns of files that must be excluded from the deletion list. No files (except default excludes) are excluded when omitted. | No
excludesfile | Deprecated. The name of a file. Each line of this file is taken to be an exclude pattern | No
defaultexcludes | Deprecated. Indicates whether default excludes should be used or not ("yes"/"no"). Default excludes are used when omitted. | No

### Examples

      <delete file="/lib/ant.jar"/>

deletes the file `/lib/ant.jar`.

      <delete dir="lib"/>

deletes the `lib` directory, including all files and subdirectories of `lib`.

      <delete>
        <fileset dir="." includes="**/*.bak"/>
      </delete>

deletes all files with the extension "`.bak`" from the current directory and any sub-directories.

      <delete includeEmptyDirs="true" >
        <fileset dir="build" />
      </delete>

deletes all files and subdirectories of `build`, but not `build` itself.

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