What is the purpose of the destroy command in Terraform?

• A. To create new resources
• B. To plan changes without applying
• C. To destroy all infrastructure in the workspace
• D. To validate configuration syntax

Answer: (C)

The command is used to remove infrastructure that Terraform manages. It reads the current state to know which resources exist and then deletes those resources from the real provider and updates the state to reflect their removal. This effectively tears down everything in the active workspace, bringing you back to an empty environment. Before actually performing the destruction, you can preview what will be destroyed with a plan run in destroy mode (terraform plan -destroy) to avoid surprises. If you want to remove only specific parts, you can limit the scope with -target, and if you want to skip the confirmation prompt, use -auto-approve. This is different from creating resources (apply), planning changes without applying (plan), or validating configuration syntax (validate).