Alter Database Remove File : Partition Files on different folders

Question

I need to remove partition files, once I switch the partition with staging table and empty/truncate the partition. 
When I was running the code on my local machine I was passing variable @partition_file_name to following statement:
Declare @partition_file_name varchar(128)='table_abc_201202',
@database_name varchar(128)='test'
Alter Database @database_name Remove File  @partition_file_name
Note @partition_file_name is the logical name of the partition file.
I found out partitions are saved in different folders in my Dev env...They are stored in 12 different folders which are named like 1-12.
E.g:
C:\DATA\2\table_abc_201202.ndf
C:\DATA\3\table_abc_201203.ndf
C:\DATA\4\table_abc_201204.ndf
C:\DATA\5\table_abc_201205.ndf
C:\DATA\2\table_abc_201302.ndf
C:\DATA\3\table_abc_201303.ndf
C:\DATA\4\table_abc_201304.ndf
C:\DATA\5\table_abc_201305.ndf
I am wondering , is SQL server with Alter statement is capable of getting the right path for each partition files and remove them accordingly? Or do I need to pass the physical path to the alter statement to get it removed. Though I tried doing that and
got the error.
ZK

Answer 1

I am wondering , is SQL server with Alter statement is capable of getting the right path for each partition files and remove them accordingly? Or do I need to pass the physical path to the alter statement to get it removed. Though I tried doing that and
got the error.
Yes, SQL Server knows which physical file goes with which logical filename.  (To see that SQL does know this, do a SELECT * FROM sys.sysfiles - you'll see SQL has a row for every logical filename and that row has the corresponding physical file name.)
And when you do the ALTER DATABASE REMOVE FILE, you must specify the logical filename.  You will get an error if you give the physical path.
Tom