> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://coldbox-elixir.ortusbooks.com/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://coldbox-elixir.ortusbooks.com/v2/deleting_files_and_directories.md).

# Deleting Files & Directories

You might want to delete some files before, during or after running your build. Since deleting files doesn't work on the file contents, there's no reason to use a gulp plugin within Elixir. You can use the [`del`](https://github.com/sindresorhus/del) module which is included in ColdBox Elixir and it supports multiple files and [globbing](https://github.com/sindresorhus/multimatch#globbing-patterns):

Imagine the following file structure:

```
.
├── dist
│   ├── report.csv
│   ├── desktop
│   └── mobile
│       ├── app.js
│       ├── deploy.json
│       └── index.html
└── src
```

In the gulpfile we want to clean out the contents of the `mobile` folder before running our build:

```javascript
var del     = require( 'del' );
var elixir     = require( 'coldbox-elixir' );

elixir( function( mix ){

    del( [
        'dist/report.csv',
        // here we use a globbing pattern to match everything inside the `mobile` folder
        'dist/mobile/**/*',
        // we don't want to clean this file though so we negate the pattern
        '!dist/mobile/deploy.json'
    ] );

} );
```


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