This section describes how to use PHP to delete files on Windows systems.

PHP includes the unlink() function for deleting files. The unlink() function should be used with caution. Once a file is deleted, it cannot be retrieved. The function is defined below:

The following example demonstrates how to delete a file using the unlink() function:

<?php

$filename = "C:/Documents and Settings/Administrator/MyFiles/myfile.txt";

$status = unlink($filename) or exit("Could not delete the file");

echo "file deleted successfully";
				
?>

The first step is to create a variable to hold the full path to the file whose contents will be deleted:

$filename = "C:/Documents and Settings/Administrators/MyFiles/myfile.txt";



The unlink() function is executed, accepting one parameter, the path of the original file - $filename. The unlink() function returns a value of true if the file is deleted successfully;otherwise a value of false is returned. The returned value is stored in the variable $status.

$status = unlink($filename) or die("Could not delete file");

If the unlink() function fails, the exit() function executes displaying an error message. Otherwise, a success message is displayed using the echo statement.

echo "file deleted successfully";