Deleting files using CodeIgniter?

I'm not sure if this is the proper function to delete a single file (say an image) using CodeIgniter.

$this->load->helper('file');    
delete_files('path')

http:/开发者_运维技巧/codeigniter.com/user_guide/helpers/file_helper.html

However it lists that this function is to delete entire directories, and makes no mention of how it handles individual files (if a path to only 1 file is given). Before I start testing with it, I figured I would check if anyone has ran into this problem before?

I simply want to use a CodeIgniter function to delete individually uploaded images (say user profile images) but I am unable to find anything in the documentation / user guide that helps me achieve this (yes I know I need to have proper permissions first and all that, but that is out of scope of this question).

regarding unlink()

what I was hoping for is a built in CI function that would alert me to something stupid like "no delete permission" or other factors like "file is in use". I found unlink() to sometimes not work (without throwing me an error). Hence why I asked...

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As I posted in the comments, you could utilize PHP's unlink() function. However, this seems to return an E_WARNING error upon returning false. Like I also stated in the comments, you could utilize error suppression, but still handle the error in an appropriate manner, should it fail to delete a file.