# .cov files?

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/cov-files/44275>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Created:** [August 4, 2020, 4:42pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/cov-files/44275 "2020-08-04T16:42:43Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![wsshin](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/wsshin/32/360_2.png) [@wsshin](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/wsshin)\
**Post date:** [August 4, 2020, 4:42pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/cov-files/44275/1 "2020-08-04T16:42:43Z")

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I don’t think this is Julia-related, but maybe it is still related to some practice of coding in Julia (and I don’t know where else to ask).

Today I notice that lots of .cov files are generated in my Julia project directory. For example, if I have `test.jl`, then there are many files like `test.jl.XXXXX.cov` in the same directory, where `XXXXX` is some 5-digit number. What are these files? Is it safe to delete them, or I should keep them? I suspected if they were generated by codecov, but I was not able to find relevant information.

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**Author:** ![kristoffer.carlsson](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/kristoffer.carlsson/32/22_2.png) [@kristoffer.carlsson](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/kristoffer.carlsson)\
**Post date:** [August 4, 2020, 4:46pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/cov-files/44275/2 "2020-08-04T16:46:27Z")

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> [@wsshin](#):
>
> What are these files? Is it safe to delete them, or I should keep them?

They are coverage files and are emitted by Julia when it is run with `--code-coverage` (for example when doing `Pkg.test`. The number is the PID for the julia process so that parallel tests (multiple processes) don’t write to the same file. They are safe to delete.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![kbarros](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/kbarros/32/7723_2.png) [@kbarros](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/kbarros)\
**Post date:** [October 4, 2024, 1:46pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/cov-files/44275/4 "2024-10-04T13:46:21Z")

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To list these coverage files recursively, starting from the current directory, one can use the Unix command:

```julia
find . -name "*.cov"

```

To remove all of the coverage files, the `find` command accepts an additional `-delete` option:

```julia
find . -name "*.cov" -delete

```