recursively delete a folder in java

Question

I already have a code that works, but I don't want it to actually delete the temp folder if possible. I am using the apache fileutils. Also does anyone know how to exclude folders from being deleted?

public class Cleartemp { 
    static String userprofile = System.getenv("USERPROFILE");
    public static void main(String[] args) { 
        try { 
            File directory = new File(userprofile+"\\AppData\\Local\\Temp");  
            // 
            // Deletes a directory recursively. When deletion process is fail an 
            // IOException is thrown and that's why we catch the exception. 
            // 
            FileUtils.deleteDirectory(directory); 
        } catch (IOException e) { 
            e.printStackTrace(); 
        } 
    } 
}

Answer 1

How about FileUtils.cleanDirectory ? It cleans a directory without deleting it.

You could also use Apache Commons DirectoryWalker if you need some filtering logic. One of the examples on the page includes FileCleaner implementation.

Answer 2

Here's an actually recursive method:

public void deleteDirectory(File startFile, FileFilter ignoreFilter) {
    if(startFile.isDirectory())
        for(File f : startFile.listFiles()) {
            deleteDirectory(f, ignoreFilter);
        }
    if(!ignoreFilter.accept(startFile)) {
        startFile.delete();
    }
}

Hand it a file filter set to return true for directories (see below) to make it not delete directories. You can also add exceptions for other files too

    FileFilter folderFilter = new FileFilter() {

        @Override
        public boolean accept(File paramFile) {
            return paramFile.isDirectory();
        }

    };

Answer 3

Simple,

Use isDirectory() to exclude it from being deleted.

Refer here: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/1.4.2/docs/api/java/io/File.html#isDirectory()

Answer 4

First ever post, don't consider myself an expert but am stuck with 1.4...

Here's a recursive delete method that works well, deletes all files and subfolders within a parent folder then the parent folder itself, assumes the File being passed is a directory as it is in my case.

private void deleteTemp(File tempDir) {
    File[] a = (tempDir.listFiles());
        for (int i = 0; i < a.length; i++) {
            File b = a[i];
                if (b.isDirectory())
                    deleteTemp(b);

                b.delete();
        }

        tempDir.delete();
}