FDELETE Function

Deletes an external file or an empty directory.

Category:	External Files
See:	FDELETE Function: Windows in SAS Companion for Windows
	FDELETE Function: UNIX in SAS Companion for UNIX Environments
	FDELETE Function: z/OS in SAS Companion for z/OS

Syntax

FDELETE(fileref | directory)

Required Arguments

fileref

is a character constant, variable, or expression that specifies the fileref that you assigned to the external file. You can assign filerefs by using the FILENAME statement or the FILENAME external file access function.

Restriction	The fileref that you use with FDELETE cannot be a concatenation.
Windows specifics	In some operating environments, you can specify a fileref that was assigned with an environment variable. You can also assign filerefs using system commands. For details, see the SAS documentation for your operating environment.

Details

FDELETE returns 0 if the operation was successful or ≠0 if it was not successful.

Examples

Example 1: Deleting an External File

This example generates a fileref for an external file in the variable FNAME. Then it calls FDELETE to delete the file and calls the FILENAME function again to deassign the fileref.

data _null_;
    fname="tempfile";
    rc=filename(fname,"physical-filename");
    if rc = 0 and fexist(fname) then
       rc=fdelete(fname);
    rc=filename(fname);
run;

Example 2: Deleting a Directory

This example uses FDELETE to delete an empty directory to which you have write access. If the directory is not empty, the optional SYSMSG function returns an error message stating that SAS is unable to delete the file.

filename testdir 'physical-filename';
data _null_;
   rc=fdelete('testdir');
   put rc=;
   msg=sysmsg();
   put msg=;
run;