Published Oct 10 2018
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How do you remove a file from the filesytem using Node.js?
Node offers a synchronous method, and an asynchronous method through the fs
built-in module.
The asynchronous one is fs.unlink()
.
The synchronous one is fs.unlinkSync()
.
The difference is simple: the synchronous call will cause your code to block and wait until the file has been removed. The asynchronous one will not block your code, and will call a callback function once the file has been deleted.
Hereโs how to use those 2 functions:
fs.unlinkSync()
:
const fs = require('fs')
const path = './file.txt'
try {
fs.unlinkSync(path)
//file removed
} catch(err) {
console.error(err)
}
fs.unlink()
:
const fs = require('fs')
const path = './file.txt'
fs.unlink(path, (err) => {
if (err) {
console.error(err)
return
}
//file removed
})