unlink

(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)

unlink — Deletes a file

unlink(string $filename, ?resource $context = null): bool

Deletes filename. Similar to the Unix C unlink() function. An E_WARNING level error will be generated on failure.

filename

Path to the file.

If the file is a symlink, the symlink will be deleted. On Windows, to delete a symlink to a directory, rmdir() has to be used instead.

context

A context stream resource.

Returns true on success or false on failure.

Version	Description
7.3.0	On Windows, it is now possible to unlink() files with handles in use, while formerly that would fail. However, it is still not possible to re-create the unlinked file, until all handles to it have been closed.

Example #1 Basic unlink() usage

<?php
$fh = fopen('test.html', 'a');
fwrite($fh, '<h1>Hello world!</h1>');
fclose($fh);

unlink('test.html');
?>