Recipe 19.12 Removing a Directory and Its Contents
19.12.1 Problem
You want to remove a
directory and all of its contents, including subdirectories and their
contents.
19.12.2 Solution
On Unix, use rm:
$directory = escapeshellarg($directory);
exec("rm -rf $directory");
On Windows, use rmdir:
$directory = escapeshellarg($directory);
exec("rmdir /s /q $directory");
19.12.3 Discussion
Removing files, obviously, can be dangerous. Be sure to escape
$directory with escapeshellarg(
) so that you don't delete
unintended files.
Because PHP's built-in directory removal function,
rmdir( ) , works only on empty directories, and
unlink( ) can't accept shell
wildcards, calling a system program is much easier than recursively
looping through all files in a directory, removing them, and then
removing each directory. If an external utility
isn't available, however, you can modify the
pc_process_dir( ) function from Recipe 19.10 to remove each subdirectory.
19.12.4 See Also
Documentation on rmdir( ) at
http://www.php.net/rmdir; your
system's rm or
rmdir documentation, such as the Unix
rm(1) manpage or the Windows rmdir
/? help text.
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