Deletes a list of files. On success, it returns the number of files it successfully deleted. On failure, it returns false and sets $!
(errno):
my $unlinked = unlink 'a', 'b', 'c';
unlink @goners;
unlink glob "*.bak";
On error, unlink
will not tell you which files it could not remove. If you want to know which files you could not remove, try them one at a time:
foreach my $file ( @goners ) {
unlink $file or warn "Could not unlink $file: $!";
}
Note: unlink
will not attempt to delete directories unless you are superuser and the -U flag is supplied to Perl. Even if these conditions are met, be warned that unlinking a directory can inflict damage on your filesystem. Finally, using unlink
on directories is not supported on many operating systems. Use rmdir
instead.