“rm -rf” equivalent for Windows?

Question

I need a way to recursively delete a folder and its children.

Is there a prebuilt tool for this, or do I need to write one?

DEL /S doesn't delete directories.

DELTREE was removed from Windows 2000+

Answer 1

RMDIR or RD if you are using the classic Command Prompt (cmd.exe):

rd /s /q "path"

If you are using PowerShell you can use Remove-Item (which is aliased to del, erase, rd, ri, rm and rmdir) and takes a -Recurse argument that can be shorted to -r

rd -r "path"

Answer 2

admin:

takeown /r /f folder
cacls folder /c /G "ADMINNAME":F /T
rmdir /s folder

Works for anything including sys files

EDIT: I actually found the best way which also solves file path too long problem as well:

mkdir \empty
robocopy /mir \empty folder

Answer 3

RMDIR [/S] [/Q] [drive:]path

RD [/S] [/Q] [drive:]path

• /S Removes all directories and files in the specified directory in addition to the directory itself. Used to remove a directory tree.

• /Q Quiet mode, do not ask if ok to remove a directory tree with /S

Answer 4

You can install cygwin, which has rm as well as ls etc.

Answer 5

Go to the path and trigger this command.

rd /s /q "FOLDER_NAME"

/s : Removes the specified directory and all subdirectories including any files. Use /s to remove a tree.

/q : Runs rmdir in quiet mode. Deletes directories without confirmation.

/? : Displays help at the command prompt.

Answer 6

For deleting a directory (whether or not it exists) use the following:

if exist myfolder ( rmdir /s/q myfolder )

Answer 7

rmdir /S /Q %DIRNAME%

Answer 8

rmdir /s dirname

Answer 9

Try this command:

del /s foldername

Answer 10

First, let’s review what rm -rf does:

C:\Users\ohnob\things>touch stuff.txt

C:\Users\ohnob\things>rm -rf stuff.txt

C:\Users\ohnob\things>mkdir stuff.txt

C:\Users\ohnob\things>rm -rf stuff.txt

C:\Users\ohnob\things>ls -l
total 0

C:\Users\ohnob\things>rm -rf stuff.txt

There are three scenarios where rm -rf is commonly used where it is expected to return 0:

1. The specified path does not exist.
2. The specified path exists and is a directory.
3. The specified path exists and is a file.

I’m going to ignore the whole permissions thing, but nobody uses permissions or tries to deny themselves write access on things in Windows anyways (OK, that’s meant to be a joke…).

First set ERRORLEVEL to 0 and then delete the path only if it exists, using different commands depending on whether or not it is a directory. IF EXIST does not set ERRORLEVEL to 0 if the path does not exist, so setting the ERRORLEVEL to 0 first is necessary to properly detect success in a way that mimics normal rm -rf usage. Guarding the RD with IF EXIST is necessary because RD, unlike rm -f, will throw an error if the target does not exist.

The following script snippet assumes that DELPATH is prequoted. (This is safe when you do something like SET DELPATH=%1. Try putting ECHO %1 in a .cmd and passing it an argument with spaces in it and see what happens for yourself). After the snippet completes, you can check for failure with IF ERRORLEVEL 1.

: # Determine whether we need to invoke DEL or RD or do nothing.
SET DELPATH_DELMETHOD=RD
PUSHD %DELPATH% 2>NUL
IF ERRORLEVEL 1 (SET DELPATH_DELMETHOD=DEL) ELSE (POPD)
IF NOT EXIST %DELPATH% SET DELPATH_DELMETHOD=NOOP
: # Reset ERRORLEVEL so that the last command which
: # otherwise set it does not cause us to falsely detect
: # failure.
CMD /C EXIT 0
IF %DELPATH_DELMETHOD%==DEL DEL /Q %DELPATH%
IF %DELPATH_DELMETHOD%==RD RD /S /Q %DELPATH%

Point is, everything is simpler when the environment just conforms to POSIX. Or if you install a minimal MSYS and just use that.

Answer 11

You can install GnuWin32 and use *nix commands natively on windows. I install this before I install anything else on a minty fresh copy of windows. :)

Answer 12

Here is what you need to do...

Create a batch file with the following line

RMDIR /S %1

Save your batch file as Remove.bat and put it in C:\windows

Create the following registry key

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\Remove Directory (RMDIR)

Launch regedit and update the default value HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\Remove Directory (RMDIR)\default with the following value

"c:\windows\REMOVE.bat" "%1"

Thats it! Now you can right click any directory and use the RMDIR function

Answer 13

Using Powershell 5.1

 get-childitem *logs* -path .\ -directory -recurse | remove-item -confirm:$false -recurse -force

Replace logs with the directory name you want to delete.

get-childitem searches for the children directory with the name recursively from current path (.).

remove-item deletes the result.

Answer 14

The accepted answer is great, but assuming you have Node installed, you can do this much more precisely with the node library "rimraf", which allows globbing patterns. If you use this a lot (I do), just install it globally.

yarn global add rimraf

then, for instance, a pattern I use constantly:

rimraf .\**\node_modules

or for a one-liner that let's you dodge the global install, but which takes slightly longer for the the package dynamic download:

npx rimraf .\**\node_modules

Answer 15

here is what worked for me:

Just try decreasing the length of the path. i.e :: Rename all folders that lead to such a file to smallest possible names. Say one letter names. Go on renaming upwards in the folder hierarchy. By this u effectively reduce the path length. Now finally try deleting the file straight away.

Answer 16

via Powershell

 Remove-Item -Recurse -Force "TestDirectory"

via Command Prompt

https://stackoverflow.com/a/35731786/439130

Answer 17

USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. INFORMATION PROVIDED 'AS IS'. NOT TESTED EXTENSIVELY.

Right-click Windows icon (usually bottom left) > click "Windows PowerShell (Admin)" > use this command (with due care, you can easily delete all your files if you're not careful):

rd -r -include *.* -force somedir

Where somedir is the non-empty directory you want to remove.

Note that with external attached disks, or disks with issues, Windows sometimes behaves odd - it does not error in the delete (or any copy attempt), yet the directory is not deleted (or not copied) as instructed. (I found that in this case, at least for me, the command given by @n_y in his answer will produce errors like 'get-childitem : The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable.' as a result in PowerShell)

Answer 18

There is also deltree if you're on an older version of windows.

I really like this site for finding commands: SS64: Del - Delete Files

Answer 19

del /s /q directorytobedeleted