In computing, del (or erase) is a command in command-line interpreters (shells) such as COMMAND.COM, cmd.exe, 4DOS, NDOS, 4OS2, 4NT and Windows PowerShell. It is used to delete one or more files or directories from a file system. Implementations The command is available for various operating systems including DOS, Microware OS-9, IBM OS/2, Microsoft Windows and ReactOS. It is analogous to the Unix rm command and to the Stratus OpenVOS delete_file and delete_dircommands. DEC RT-11, OS/8, RSX-11, and OpenVMS also provide the delete command which can be contracted to del. AmigaDOS and TSC FLEX provide a delete command as well. The erase command is supported by Tim Paterson's SCP 86-DOS. On MS-DOS, the command is available in versions 1 and later. It is also available in the open-source MS-DOS emulator DOSBox. Datalight ROM-DOS also includes an implementation of the and commands. While Digital Research DR-DOS supports del and erase as well, it also supports the shorthand form era, which derived from CP/M. In addition to this, the DR-DOS command processor also supports delq/eraq. These are shorthand forms for the del/era/erase command with an assumed /Q parameter (for 'Query') given as well. THEOS/OASIS and FlexOS provide only the erase command. In PowerShell, del and erase are predefined command aliases for the Remove-Item cmdlet which basically serves the same purpose. Syntax del filename erase filename See also deltree rmdir List of DOS commands List of Unix commands References Further reading External links del | Microsoft Docs Internal DOS commands MSX-DOS commands OS/2 commands ReactOS commands Windows commands Microcomputer software Windows administration File deletion