File delete bug or wrong help

[instrumento]

The help for Delete (file) claims for indicator "deleted path": deleted path is the path of the deleted file or folder.deleted path returns <Not A Path> if an error occurred.

On my 2022Q3 LabVIEW, wiring  a c:\non-existent-file.txt  constant path to the path control (where that file really doesn't exist) returns that same  path for "deleted path" and error 7, thus an error occurred, but "deleted path" is not <Not A Path>.

Bug or bad documentation?

[RTSLVU]

My vote is for bad documentation as LabVIEW 2025 Q1 does exactly as you described.

[zou]

Same behavior for LabVIEW 2018 SP1 64bit.

[pincpanter]

Same for LabVIEW 2011 and 2017. However, I think it's a bug. In LabVIEW 7.1, the output was named "dup path" (or similar). At a given point, it was decided that the output name should change to "deleted path". Given this name, it is far more reasonable to get a <Not A Path> if nothing is actually deleted.

[Kyle97330]

I suspect this may be the sort of situation where most reasonable solution is that the help file gets updated, rather than the function.  As a general rule, if a software library has done something one way for a long time it's best to keep it that way (and it seems like it's been 15 years minimum...).

While it may be "more correct" if the output of "deleted file" is nulled when no file deletion took place, there are likely programs out there sitting unchanged that could suddenly stop working if this change was implemented.