Java better way to delete file if exists

Question

We need to call file.exists() before file.delete() before we can delete a file E.g.

 File file = ...;
 if (file.exists()){
     fil         


        

Answer 1

Apache Commons IO's FileUtils offers FileUtils.deleteQuietly:

Deletes a file, never throwing an exception. If file is a directory, delete it and all sub-directories. The difference between File.delete() and this method are:

• A directory to be deleted does not have to be empty.
• No exceptions are thrown when a file or directory cannot be deleted.

This offers a one-liner delete call that won't complain if the file fails to be deleted:

FileUtils.deleteQuietly(new File("test.txt"));