Deleting Data Sets with the DELETE Command

To delete one or more data sets or one or more members of a partitioned data set from the system, use the DELETE command.

When the system deletes an entire data set, it removes the catalog entry. The system deletes members of a partitioned data set by removing the member name from the directory of the partitioned data set.

When you delete a member that has one or more aliases, the system does not delete the aliases for that member. When you delete an alias, the system does not delete its associated member. Thus you must explicitly delete both a member and its alias or aliases.

Using the DELETE command, you can specify:

The name of the data set you want to delete. You can also specify a data set's password, if it is password-protected.
The name of the DD statement that identifies either the volume on which the data set to be deleted resides or the data set itself (FILE operand)
The name of the catalog that contains the data sets you want to delete (CATALOG operand)
Whether to delete a data set depending on its retention period (PURGE/NOPURGE operands)
Whether to scratch (remove) a non-VSAM data set's entry from the volume table of contents (VTOC) on the volume on which the data set resides (SCRATCH/NOSCRATCH operands)
That the system is to delete an alias entry (ALIAS operand)