PHP: Simplest way to delete a folder (including its contents)

Question

The rmdir() function fails if the folder contains any files. I can loop through all of the the files in the directory with something like this:

foreach (scandir($dir) as $item) {
    if ($item == '.' || $item == '..') continue;
    unlink($dir.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.$item);
}
rmdir($dir);

Is there any way to just delete it all at once?

score 63 · Answer 1 · edited Nov 21 '12 at 10:36

63

rrmdir() -- recursively delete directories:

function rrmdir($dir) { 
  foreach(glob($dir . '/*') as $file) { 
    if(is_dir($file)) rrmdir($file); else unlink($file); 
  } rmdir($dir); 
}

edited Nov 21 '12 at 10:36

Pragnesh Chauhan

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answered Nov 21 '12 at 10:15

Yuriy

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I once delete my whole project using such function, be careful! – gskema Jul 21 '14 at 08:27
2

@gskema, Your comment made me laugh!!! I can only imagine the "ohhhh shhiiiiittttt" moment. I hope you got it all back! – silversunhunter Apr 22 '15 at 16:21
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@silversunhunter Actually, I didn't. When `unlink` deletes something, it means it. Good thing that it was only a test project. Lesson of the day: use a remote VCS – gskema Apr 22 '15 at 16:46
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@gskema, I sympathize. I literally just deleted my entire website by accident. Thank god I've got a backup. – yaakov Oct 26 '16 at 20:06
@TricksfortheWeb Your name checks out :D – gskema Oct 27 '16 at 07:50
delete whole project folder: `rrmdir('.');` :) – Taufik Nur Rahmanda Aug 10 '17 at 07:27

chaos · Accepted Answer · 2011-07-11T23:23:17.360

47

Well, there's always

system('/bin/rm -rf ' . escapeshellarg($dir));

where available.

edited Jul 11 '11 at 23:23

answered Aug 18 '09 at 21:42

chaos

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@KashifRaza: Right. Hence "where available". – chaos Dec 11 '13 at 16:03
On Windows use this: system('rd /Q /S "' . $dir . '"'); – ddelrio1986 Jun 23 '14 at 14:31

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 21 '15 at 10:08

function delete_files($dir) {
  if (is_dir($dir)) {
    $objects = scandir($dir);
    foreach ($objects as $object) {
      if ($object != "." && $object != "..") {
        if (filetype($dir."/".$object) == "dir") 
           delete_files($dir."/".$object); 
        else unlink   ($dir."/".$object);
      }
    }
    reset($objects);
    rmdir($dir);
  }
 }

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Aug 18 '09 at 21:51

2

As per this source;

Save some time, if you want to clean a directory or delete it and you're on windows.

Use This:

    chdir ($file_system_path);
    exec ("del *.* /s /q");

You can use other DEL syntax, or any other shell util. You may have to allow the service to interact with the desktop, as that's my current setting and I'm not changing it to test this.

Else you could find an alternative method here.

answered Aug 18 '09 at 21:51

Kevin Boyd

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it's a bad idea to have to depend on your OS... this only works on Windows and would fail on a Unix system for instance... – patrick Feb 14 '17 at 00:55

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Jan 02 '13 at 11:22

1

Try this :

exec('rm -rf '.$user_dir);

answered Jan 02 '13 at 11:22

Ravinder Singh

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never ever! you must esape $user_dir! please add escapeshellarg($user_dir) – Tomek Kobyliński Jul 21 '15 at 08:18
unsafe and worse: depends on your OS... this would fail on a windows system for instance... – patrick Feb 14 '17 at 00:55

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Mar 25 '15 at 23:02

This fuction delete the directory and all subdirectories and files:

function DelDir($target) {
    if(is_dir($target)) {
        $files = glob( $target . '*', GLOB_MARK ); //GLOB_MARK adds a slash to directories returned

        foreach( $files as $file )
        {
            DelDir( $file );      
        }

        rmdir( $target );
    } elseif(is_file($target)) {
        unlink( $target );  
    }
}

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Sep 13 '15 at 21:12

One safe and good function located in php comments by lprent It prevents accidentally deleting contents of symbolic links directories located in current directory

public static function delTree($dir) { 
   $files = array_diff(scandir($dir), array('.','..')); 
    foreach ($files as $file) { 
      (is_dir("$dir/$file") && !is_link($dir)) ? delTree("$dir/$file") : unlink("$dir/$file"); 
    } 
    return rmdir($dir); 
  }

PHP: Simplest way to delete a folder (including its contents)

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