Deletes a single file, a specified directory and all its files and
subdirectories, 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
attribute.
If you use this task to delete temporary files created by editors
and it doesn't seem to work, read up on the
default exclusion set
in Directory-based Tasks, and see the
defaultexcludes
attribute below.
Attribute | Description | Required |
file | The file to delete, specified as either the simple filename (if the file exists in the current base directory), a relative-path filename, or a full-path filename. | At least one of the two,
unless a <fileset> is specified. |
dir | The directory to delete, including all its files and
subdirectories. Note: dir is not used
to specify a directory name for file ; file
and dir are independent of each other.WARNING: Do not set dir to
"." , "${basedir}" ,
or the full-pathname equivalent unless you truly intend to
recursively remove the entire contents of the current base directory
(and the base directory itself, if different from the current working
directory). |
|
verbose | Show the name of each deleted file ("true"/"false"). Default is "false" when omitted. | No |
quiet | If the specified file or directory does not exist,
do not display a diagnostic message (unless Ant
has been invoked with the ‑verbose or
‑debug switches) or modify the exit status to
reflect an error.
When set to "true", if a file or directory cannot be deleted,
no error is reported. This setting emulates the
-f option to the Unix rm command.
Default is "false".
Setting this to "true" implies setting
failonerror to "false".
|
No |
failonerror |
Controls whether an error (such as a failure to delete a file)
stops the build or is merely reported to the screen.
Only relevant if quiet is "false".
Default is "true".
|
No |
includeEmptyDirs | Set to "true" to delete empty directories when using filesets. Default is "false". | No |
includes | Deprecated. Use <fileset> .
Comma-separated list of patterns of
files that must be deleted. All files are relative to the directory
specified in dir .
|
No |
includesfile | Deprecated. Use <fileset> .
The name of a file. Each line of
this file is taken to be an include pattern |
No |
excludes | Deprecated. Use <fileset> .
Comma-separated list of patterns of
files that must be excluded from the deletion list.
All files are relative to the directory specified in dir .
No files (except default excludes) are excluded when omitted. |
No |
excludesfile | Deprecated. Use <fileset> .
The name of a file. Each line of
this file is taken to be an exclude pattern |
No |
defaultexcludes | Indicates whether default excludes should be used or not ("yes"/"no"). Default excludes are used when omitted. | No |
<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 subdirectories.
<delete includeEmptyDirs="true" > <fileset dir="build" /> </delete>
deletes all files and subdirectories of build
, including
build
itself.
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