Java better way to delete file if exists

Starting from Java 7 you can use deleteIfExists that returns a boolean (or throw an Exception) depending on whether a file was deleted or not. This method may not be atomic with respect to other file system operations. Moreover if a file is in use by JVM/other program then on some operating system it will not be able to remove it. Every file can be converted to path via toPath method . E.g.

File file = ...;
boolean result = Files.deleteIfExists(file.toPath()); //surround it in try catch block

file.delete();

if the file doesn't exist, it will return false.

There's also the Java 7 solution, using the new(ish) Path abstraction:

Path fileToDeletePath = Paths.get("fileToDelete_jdk7.txt");
Files.delete(fileToDeletePath);

Hope this helps.

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"));

I was working on this type of function, maybe this will interests some of you ...

public boolean deleteFile(File file) throws IOException {
    if (file != null) {
        if (file.isDirectory()) {
            File[] files = file.listFiles();

            for (File f: files) {
                deleteFile(f);
            }
        }
        return Files.deleteIfExists(file.toPath());
    }
    return false;
}