I use Windows.
I want to delete all files and folders in a folder by system call.
I may call like that:
>rd /s /q c:\destination >md c:\destination Do you know an easier way?
- 1superuser.com/questions/173859/…NoWar– NoWar2016-06-20 17:37:15 +00:00Commented Jun 20, 2016 at 17:37
- Possible duplicate of What ever happened to deltree, and what's its replacement?Rosberg Linhares– Rosberg Linhares2017-02-16 14:57:23 +00:00Commented Feb 16, 2017 at 14:57
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12 Answers
No, I don't know one.
If you want to retain the original directory for some reason (ACLs, &c.), and instead really want to empty it, then you can do the following:
del /q destination\* for /d %x in (destination\*) do @rd /s /q "%x" This first removes all files from the directory, and then recursively removes all nested directories, but overall keeping the top-level directory as it is (except for its contents).
Note that within a batch file you need to double the % within the for loop:
del /q destination\* for /d %%x in (destination\*) do @rd /s /q "%%x" 
12 Comments
Matt Broekhuis
i was able to do this without a batch file. use the && to concat the two operations
low_rents
I am a complete windows-shell noob: how do i set the destination to a path with this example?
Joey
You replace the word
destination by the path, possibly using quotes around the whole thing if necessary.
KCD
This answer makes me sad, because it is the best answer
Joey
@stenci: The second line can only delete the given directory. It does so recursively, indeed, but it cannot delete a file. Therefore, to remove everything inside a directory you have to remove all files, and all directories. Note that this is not about deleting a single directory and everything within. It's about deleting everything within and keeping the parent directory.
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del c:\destination\*.* /s /q worked for me. I hope that works for you as well.
5 Comments
Eric Rini
Deletes all the files but not the folders.
Daniel L. VanDenBosch
What worked for me was navigate to the folder. (shift right click, select open cmd prompt here) then
del *.*
FindOutIslamNow
example for relative path
del "../../server/front-end\*.*"
Synetech
@DanielL.VanDenBosch, that's not very scriptable.
Kuznetsov-M
The
*.* mask used will skip files that do not have an extension. For example makefile. Mask must be used *.I think the easiest way to do it is:
rmdir /s /q "C:\FolderToDelete\" The last "" in the path is the important part.
This deletes the folder itself. To retain, add mkdir "C:\FolderToDelete\" to your script.
5 Comments
Archie
This also deletes the folder itself.
eomeroff
Does this works recursively what is the path it too long?
sunil
This seems to be the best answer, since it deletes the folders & files recursively
qbolec
combining this with
mkdir C:\FolderToNotToDelete was enough for me :)
Mladen B.
This can be problematic if your parent folder (which gets deleted this way) holds some important permissions, which you now need to recreate...
Yes! Use Powershell:
powershell -Command "Remove-Item 'c:\destination\*' -Recurse -Force" 
Comments
If the subfolder names may contain spaces you need to surround them in escaped quotes. The following example shows this for commands used in a batch file.
set targetdir=c:\example del /q %targetdir%\* for /d %%x in (%targetdir%\*) do @rd /s /q ^"%%x^" 
Comments
To delete file:
del PATH_TO_FILE To delete folder with all files in it:
rmdir /s /q PATH_TO_FOLDER To delete all files from specific folder (not deleting folder itself) is a little bit complicated. del /s *.* cannot delete folders, but removes files from all subfolder. So two commands are needed:
del /q PATH_TO_FOLDER\*.* for /d %i in (PATH_TO_FOLDER\*.*) do @rmdir /s /q "%i" You can create a script to delete whatever you want (folder or file) like this mydel.bat:
@echo off setlocal enableextensions if "%~1"=="" ( echo Usage: %0 path exit /b 1 ) :: check whether it is folder or file set ISDIR=0 set ATTR=%~a1 set DIRATTR=%ATTR:~0,1% if /i "%DIRATTR%"=="d" set ISDIR=1 :: Delete folder or file if %ISDIR%==1 (rmdir /s /q "%~1") else (del "%~1") exit /b %ERRORLEVEL% Few example of usage:
mydel.bat "path\to\folder with spaces" mydel.bat path\to\file_or_folder 
Comments
One easy one-line option is to create an empty directory somewhere on your file system, and then use ROBOCOPY (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc733145.aspx) with the /MIR switch to remove all files and subfolders. By default, robocopy does not copy security, so the ACLs in your root folder should remain intact.
Also probably want to set a value for the retry switch, /r, because the default number of retries is 1 million.
robocopy "C:\DoNotDelete_UsedByScripts\EmptyFolder" "c:\temp\MyDirectoryToEmpty" /MIR /r:3 
Comments
try this, this will search all MyFolder under root dir and delete all folders named MyFolder
for /d /r "C:\Users\test" %%a in (MyFolder\) do if exist "%%a" rmdir /s /q "%%a" 
Comments
I had an index folder with 33 folders that needed all the files and subfolders removed in them. I opened a command line in the index folder and then used these commands:
for /d in (*) do rd /s /q "%a" & ( md "%a") I separated them into two lines (hit enter after first line, and when asked for more add second line) because if entered on a single line this may not work. This command will erase each directory and then create a new one which is empty, thus removing all files and subflolders in the original directory.
Comments
Navigate to the parent directory
Line1 pushd "Parent Directory"
Delete the sub folders
Line2 rd /s /q . 2>nul
1 Comment
xmedeko
If you use
pushd you have to use popd too. Unfortunately, popd does not work when you delete the directory. So, you have to do cd instead of pushd.It takes 2 simple steps. [/q means quiet, /f means forced, /s means subdir]
Empty out the directory to remove
del *.* /f/s/qRemove the directory
cd .. rmdir dir_name /q/s
1 Comment
Urasquirrel
what if you just want to remove the contents and not the entire directory?
del .\* This Command delete all files & folders from current navigation in your command line.
