Delete a file in PHP

This article demonstrates how to delete a file in PHP.

In PHP, you can use the unlink() function to delete a file from the file system. It works similarly to the Unix C unlink() function.

<?php

$file = '/path/to/directory/file.txt';

unlink($file);

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If the specified file is a symlink, the unlink() function deletes it. If the file does not exist, a PHP warning will be thrown. You might want to check if the file exists or not before calling the unlink() function. This can be done using the file_exists() function.

<?php

$file = '/path/to/directory/file.txt';

if (file_exists($file)) {

unlink($file);

echo "File deleted successfully";

} else {

echo "File not found";

}

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Furthermore, if the file is a directory, the unlink() function will throw a PHP warning. It is advisable to check first whether the specified file is a directory or not. This can be done using the is_dir() function, which returns a boolean value depending on the result.

<?php

$file = '/path/to/directory/file.txt';

if (file_exists($file) && !is_dir($file)) {

unlink($file);

echo "File deleted successfully";

} else {

echo "File not found or it is a directory";

}

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If you want to delete multiple files, you can do so within a loop. To illustrate, the following solution iterates over an array of filenamesand deletes each file individually using unlink().

<?php

$dir = '/path/to/directory';

$files = ['1.txt', '2.txt', '3.txt'];

foreach ($files as $file)

{

if (file_exists("$dir/$file") && !is_dir("$dir/$file")) {

unlink("$dir/$file");

} else {

echo "File $file not found or it is a directory";

}

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That’s all there is to deleting a file in PHP.

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