Deleting and merging a partition with diskutil from the command line OS X

deleting_merging_partitions

/**
* diskutil list shows you the partitions currently connected to your unit
**/

imac:~ user$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            987.2 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:                  Apple_HFS eDrive                  12.0 GB    disk0s4
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk1
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Backup                  999.9 GB   disk1s2
imac:~ user$ 

/**
* to delete a partition you can also use diskutil eraseVolume followed by partition type, partition name and the path
**/

imac:~ user$ diskutil eraseVolume HFS+ eDrive /dev/disk0s4

/**
* to merge partitions use diskutil mergePartitions the syntax is nearly the same as above
* diskutil mergePartitions partition type, partition name and the the identifier of the partition you want to merge
* the first given partition in row will absorbing the space from the followed partitions and would be expanded
* BEWARE backup your files, all files on the used partitions will be deleted
*
* The example below merging the partitions disk0s2 disk03s disk04s to one partition disk02s named brandnew with the HFS+ filetype
**/

imac:~ user$ diskutil mergePartitions HFS+ brandnew disk0s2 disk03s disk04s