This post shows how to delete files in Java. Our codes will not use any third-party library to accomplish the task.
Java Requirements
We used the following items for this post. Note that the Java codes will still work on the latest version of Java. Therefore, we do not need to update the codes.
- Windows 7 Professional SP1
- Eclipse – Kepler Release
- Java 1.7 (1.7.0_67 – Windows x86)
Java Codes To Delete File
To delete files or even directories in Java, we could use the File class. It is rather is a simple class to use with only three constructors to keep in mind. Once we created an instance of the File class, we use one of its methods for file or directory deletion – delete and deleteOnExit. For this post, we use the former. Consider the following Java codes.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 | /* * Copyright (C) 2014 www.turreta.com * * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. * You may obtain a copy of the License at * * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 * * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and * limitations under the License. */ package com.turreta.io.file; import java.io.File; public class MyFileUtil { public static boolean deleteFile(String fileName) { File file = new File(fileName); /* Check if we are deleting a file and not a directory * which can be non-empty. */ if(file.exists() && file.isFile()) { return file.delete(); } else { // Log reason return false; } } public static void main(String[] args) { // File C:/Users/user123/Desktop/delete_me.txt needs to be existing boolean t = MyFileUtil.deleteFile("C:/Users/user123/Desktop/delete_me.txt"); System.out.println(t ? "File deleted" : "File not deleted"); } } |
We pass a string value representing the file in our local file system. Then, we use it to create an instance of the File object. We cannot delete a file or directory if it does not exist. Otherwise, we get an exception from the JVM. Therefore, we add validation codes to check if the file exists and is a file (not a directory). Then, we use the delete method to delete an actual file in Java.
When we files or directories in Java using the File class, the delete method can return either a boolean true or false, which we could use to determine if the operation was successful or not.
This post is (now) part of a reboot Java tutorial.
