CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c++file-iodelete-directory
user95644
user95644

Reputation:

Delete folder and all files/subdirectories

How can I delete a folder with all it's files/subdirectories (recursive deletion) in C++?

Upvotes: 25

Views: 32362

Answers (5)

William Pursell
William Pursell

Reputation: 212664

Seriously:

system("rm -rf /path/to/directory")

Perhaps more what you're looking for, but unix specific:

/* Implement system( "rm -rf" ) */
    
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <limits.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <ftw.h>
#include <unistd.h>

/* Call unlink or rmdir on the path, as appropriate. */
int
rm(const char *path, const struct stat *s, int flag, struct FTW *f)
{
        int status;
        int (*rm_func)(const char *);
        (void)s;
        (void)f;
        rm_func = flag == FTW_DP ? rmdir : unlink;
        if( status = rm_func(path), status != 0 ){
                perror(path);
        } else if( getenv("VERBOSE") ){
                puts(path);
        }
        return status;
}


int
main(int argc, char **argv)
{
        (void)argc;
        while( *++argv ) {
                if( nftw(*argv, rm, OPEN_MAX, FTW_DEPTH) ){
                        perror(*argv);
                        return EXIT_FAILURE;
                }
        }
        return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

Upvotes: 23

Exagon
Exagon

Reputation: 5098

Since C++17 the prefered answer to this would be to use

std::filesystem::remove_all(const std::filesystem::path& folder)

which deletes the content of the folder recursively and then finally deletes the folder, according to this.

Upvotes: 4

zeekvfu
zeekvfu

Reputation: 3403

You can use ftw(), nftw(), readdir(), readdir_r() to traverse a directory and delete files recursively.
But since neither ftw(), nftw(), readdir() is thread-safe, I'll recommend readdir_r() instead if your program runs in a multi-threaded environment.

Upvotes: 4

avakar
avakar

Reputation: 32685

You can use boost::remove_all from Boost.Filesystem.

Upvotes: 16

anon
anon

Reputation:

Standard C++ provides no means of doing this - you will have to use operating system specific code or a cross-platform library such as Boost.

Upvotes: 1

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