PHP Cookbook

19.11. Removing a Directory and Its Contents

Problem

You want to remove a directory and all of its contents, including subdirectories and their contents.

Solution

On Unix, use rm:

$directory = escapeshellarg($directory);
exec("rm -rf $directory");

On Windows, use rmdir:

$directory = escapeshellarg($directory);
exec("rmdir /s /q $directory");

Discussion

Removing files, obviously, can be dangerous. Be sure to escape $directory with escapeshellarg( ) so that you don’t delete unintended files.

Because PHP’s built-in directory removal function, rmdir( ) , works only on empty directories, and unlink( ) can’t accept shell wildcards, calling a system program is much easier than recursively looping through all files in a directory, removing them, and then removing each directory. If an external utility isn’t available, however, you can modify the pc_process_dir( ) function from Recipe 19.10 to remove each subdirectory.

See Also

Documentation on rmdir( ) at http://www.php.net/rmdir; your system’s rm or rmdir documentation, such as the Unix rm(1) manpage or the Windows rmdir /? help text.