How can I delete the current file in vim?

How can I delete from the disk the current open file from within vim? Would be nice to also close the buffer.

I see you can use NERDTree for that, but I don't use this plugin.

Using an external tool such as rm(1) is fine, but Vim also has its own delete() function for deleting files. This has the advantage of being portable.

:call delete(expand('%'))

An alternative way of expressing this is :call delete(@%), which uses the % (current file) register (tip by @accolade).

To completely purge the current buffer, both the file representation on disk and the Vim buffer, append :bdelete:

:call delete(expand('%')) | bdelete!

You'll probably want to map this according to your preferences.

Take a look at Delete files with a Vim command. The Comments section should have what you're looking for:

> Basically, Rm will delete the current file; RM will delete the current file and quit the buffer (without saving) in one go.

Alternatively, you could just issue a shell command to remove the current file:

:!rm %

Sometimes a plugin can be an attractive solution even for a simple problem. In this case we're lucky as there is eunuch.vim by the almighty Tim Pope.

In its own words eunuch.vim provides > Vim sugar for the UNIX shell commands that need it the most. Delete or rename a buffer and the underlying file at the same time. Load a find or a locate into the quickfix list. And so on.

Perfect. It has what we need, plus some additional tools if we're on a UNIX system.

The command you are looking for is

:Remove!

Again, remap it if you need it a lot, e.g. :nnoremap <Leader>rm :Remove!<CR>.

I like being able to delete files from within vim, but I am also paranoid about accidentally deleting important work that, for one reason or another, is not yet under version control. I find it useful to combine the previous information from @glts and @accolade with this answer on how to use the confirm command to prompt before quitting vim.

Putting these together, I added a function to my ~/.vimrc, which prompts before deleting the file and closing the buffer, and mapped it to a key combination:

nnoremap <Leader>d. :call DeleteFileAndCloseBuffer()

fun! DeleteFileAndCloseBuffer()
  let choice = confirm("Delete file and close buffer?", "&Do it!\n&Nonono", 1)
  if choice == 1 | call delete(expand('%:p')) | q! | endif
endfun

If you are one keystroke less paranoid than I am, you can append <CR> to the first line

nnoremap <Leader>d. :call DeleteFileAndCloseBuffer()<CR>

and only have to press return once.

You can do it with two steps:

1. save as a new file

   :w newfilename

2. delete the old file

   ! rm oldfilename

This may be an unpopular opinion but your file tree explorer (Netrw/NerdTree) is going to be the simplest and safest way to delete a file. Even if OP is not using NerdTree, the in-built plugin Netrw will work just as well.