How do I delete a read-only file?

Question

I've got a junk directory where I toss downloads, one-off projects, email drafts, and other various things that might be useful for a few days but don't need to be saved forever. To stop this directory from taking over my machine, I wrote a program that will delete all files older than a specified number of days and logs some statistics about the number of files deleted and their size just for fun.

I noticed that a few project folders were living way longer than they should, so I started to investigate. In particular, it seemed that folders for projects in which I had used SVN were sticking around. It turns out that the read-only files in the .svn directories are not being deleted. I just did a simple test on a read-only file and discovered that System.IO.File.Delete and System.IO.FileInfo.Delete will not delete a read-only file.

I don't care about protecting files in this particular directory; if something important is in there it's in the wrong place. Is there a .NET class that can delete read-only files, or am I going to have to check for read-only attributes and strip them?

I changed the accepted answer because Gulzar's code sample is more detailed than Tim Stewart's. Should've chose that one in the first place but for some reason I liked Tim's better. People are strange things! — OwenP, Apr 30 '09 at 22:13
+1 for taking the time to make things a little more right in the universe. If only my developers would go back and correct our own minor transgressions, we'd be able to cancel the Remedial Programming classes! — Adam Liss, May 01 '09 at 11:38

score 162 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 09 '18 at 14:52

162

According to File.Delete's documentation,, you'll have to strip the read-only attribute. You can set the file's attributes using File.SetAttributes().

using System.IO;

File.SetAttributes(filePath, FileAttributes.Normal);
File.Delete(filePath);

edited Jul 09 '18 at 14:52

martijnn2008

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answered Nov 05 '08 at 17:23

Gulzar Nazim

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You get an upvote for being right, but your answer came in after Tim Stewart's which said the same thing. – OwenP Nov 05 '08 at 17:33
In some cases you may also need to take ownership of the file before you can clear the readonly flag or delete it. See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12999272/ for details. – Greg Bray Jan 23 '14 at 21:47

score 49 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 05 '08 at 17:19

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According to File.Delete's documentation,, you'll have to strip the read-only attribute. You can set the file's attributes using File.SetAttributes().

answered Nov 05 '08 at 17:19

Tim Stewart

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It's not about being first. – VVS Nov 05 '08 at 17:55

score 22 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 29 '11 at 12:21

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The equivalent if you happen to be working with a FileInfo object is:

file.IsReadOnly = false;
file.Delete();

answered Nov 29 '11 at 12:21

Neil

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score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 05 '08 at 17:15

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Why do you need to check? Just forcibly clear the read-only flag and delete the file.

answered Nov 05 '08 at 17:15

Adam Liss

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score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Nov 05 '08 at 17:18

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Hm, I think I'd rather put

>del /F *

into a sheduled task. Maybe wrapped by a batch file for logging statistics.

Am I missing something?

answered Nov 05 '08 at 17:18

mkoeller

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Yes. He wants to delete A file when it is of particular age. Not all the files every period. – DrFloyd5 Nov 05 '08 at 17:22
He doesn't want to delete all files, just all files older than a certain amount of time. – Tim Stewart Nov 05 '08 at 17:22

How do I delete a read-only file?

5 Answers5

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