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C program to delete a specified file using the system() function

Here, we are going to learn how to delete a specified file using the system() function in C programming language?
Submitted by Nidhi, on August 01, 2021

Problem statement

In this program, we will delete a specified file using the system() function by passing the "rm" command.

C program to delete a specified file using the system() function

The source code to delete a specified file using the system() function is given below. The given program is compiled and executed using GCC compile on UBUNTU 18.04 OS successfully.

// C program to delete a specified file
// using system() library function

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int main()
{
    char fileName[] = "includehelp.txt";
    char cmd[32] = { 0 };

    int ret = 0;

    sprintf(cmd, "rm %s", fileName);

    ret = system(cmd);

    if (ret == 0)
        printf("File deleted successfully\n");
    else
        printf("Unable to delete file %s\n", fileName);

    return 0;
}

Output

File deleted successfully

Explanation

In the main() function, we created a character array filename, which is initialized with "inclludehelp.txt". Then we used the sprintf() function to prepare the "rm" command and executed the command using the system() function. The function returns 0 when the specified file gets deleted, otherwise, it returns a non-zero value. After that, we printed the appropriate message on the console screen.

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