How to delete files recursively

Question

I have the directory structure /foo/bar/fooBar/.. . I want to write a Windows command where I can mention the path till foo directory and it deletes all the files and directory recursively in /foo, but it should NOT delete the foo directory.

I have been using rmdir /q /s [path to foo] but this command deletes the foo directory as well. Let me know if there is any command(s) to accomplish this.

Possible duplicate of [What ever happened to deltree, and what's its replacement?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/338895/what-ever-happened-to-deltree-and-whats-its-replacement) — Rosberg Linhares, Feb 16 '17 at 14:46

score 49 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 21 '11 at 07:02

49

rd /s /q /path/to/foo
md /path/to/foo

answered Jan 21 '11 at 07:02

Ferruccio

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I had a bunch of nested folders and files with some that were read only. This deleted all of them except the read only, which is what I expected. This was better than the Windows Server 2003 functionality which would stop the process when it encountered a read only file. Thanks! – Sep 09 '13 at 17:46

score 9 · Answer 2 · edited May 30 '12 at 05:44

9

del /f /s /q DirectoryWhichContainsFilesToDelete/\*

This will delete all files in the folder DirectoryWhichContainsFilesToDelete without deleting the folder itself. Have fun :)

edited May 30 '12 at 05:44

Jay D

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answered Apr 30 '12 at 10:47

Libish Jacob

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Doesn't delete **directories** inside DirectoryWhichContainsFilesToDelete. – Ian Goldby May 31 '12 at 07:22

score 6 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 24 '13 at 23:59

I had been scratching my head on this one as well. It is easy enough to create a for loop that uses rmdir however it leaves behind folders that have spaces in the long names. It is possible to manipulate a dir list and get the 8.3 filenames however here is a much simpler solution.

Create an empty folder then;

robocopy \empty_folder \folder_with_sub_folders /PURGE

All subfolders & files will be deleted.

score 5 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 11 '13 at 10:04

del X /f /s /q 
rd X /s /q

this WILL remove the ROOt directory though. make it again with

 md X

or make a copy of it first.

otherwise you'll have to do batch funkiness

 dir X /ad /b

will give you a list of the immediate subdirectories of X. you can work out the rest

score 3 · Answer 5 · answered Feb 21 '13 at 09:24

I was looking for a simple command to delete all files in a directory recursively but leaving the directory structure unchanged. So, maybe this could be interesting ;)

for /f "delims=" %i in ('dir /B /S /A:-DH') do @del /F /Q /A:H "%i"

The command 'dir /B /S /A:-D' lists only files (/A:-D) in current directory recursively (/S) without 'dir' summary report (/B). The 'for' loops through each full line (/delims=) and executes the delete command, forced and quiet. I additionally used the hidden flag (/H) both for listing and deletion for some mysterious (e.g. thumbs.db) files.

this worked for me too, I had to delete certain files matching a wildcard recursively in all sub-folders, so I used `for /f "delims=" %i in ('dir /b /a-d /s "P:\Systems\A.L.P.S\~$PS*"') do @del /F /Q /A:H "%i"`and wow, it worked! — Our Man in Bananas, Mar 10 '15 at 12:29

score 2 · Answer 6 · answered Jan 21 '11 at 06:58

2

deltree /foo/* should work fine.

answered Jan 21 '11 at 06:58

Dan Paradox

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I am unfortunate enough not to have deltree command on Windows XP – Akshay Jan 21 '11 at 07:03
Then you should stick with @Ferruccio's solution. – Dan Paradox Jan 21 '11 at 07:15

score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Jun 28 '12 at 19:55

I have used this in a batch file in the past. It uses a for loop to navigate the directory structure.

Here I remove the cvs sub directories off of a tree, needed when copying from one branch to another.

@echo off
if /I exist CVS. rd CVS /s /q >nul
for /F %%z in ('dir cvs /ad /s /b') do echo %%z && rd /s /q %%z
echo Batchfile %0 is complete

score 1 · Answer 8 · answered Feb 16 '17 at 14:49

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Try to use Powershell:

powershell -Command "Remove-Item '\foo\*' -Recurse -Force"

answered Feb 16 '17 at 14:49

Rosberg Linhares

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score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Jan 13 '17 at 16:30

To prevent deleting of the foo directory try change directory to foo prior to the delete such as:

cd c:\foo rd /s /q c:\foo

This will delete all the files and folders under foo but NOT foo. An error message will be displayed as follow "The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process."

How to delete files recursively

9 Answers9