Remove Directory Warning

[ghjr]

I've got a script that removes a directory and all its subdirectories. It works fine most of the times, but here is the problem:

Let's say I have the directory /car/ which has two subdirectories like this:

car/mercedes/
car/audi/

If I run the script to remove the car directory while I'm browsing the car directory with windows explorer, the script works perfectly. Now if I run the script while I'm browsing one of the subdirectories of car, it clears up all the content in car, but gives me a warning and does not remove the car directory alleging it is not empty (even though it now is). Here is the warning I get:

Warning: rmdir(../africa/mercedes): Directory not empty in C:\Inetpub... and so on

Any ideas on how to get around such a thing?

Cheers! 😃

EDIT: By the way, is there a way to retrieve files after they have been deleted by rmdir, like through the recycle bin or so?

[ghjr]

I guess I can make a temp directory with all the files, and if the main directory doesn't get deleted I would just send all the stuff back and warn the user.... but I really wish there was a way around this. Any suggestions?

Cheers! 😃

[Dvector]

rmdir will only remove empty directories ( no files or directories left below it).

You can use rm -rf to force remove recursively a directory with files and directories below it. Be very careful using rm -rf though. A slight mistake on your directory you want to delete could mean deleting something you dont want to. You could run rm -rfi to force remove recusively and interactively, but then you would have to affirm the deletion of each file in the directory. At least you wouldnt accidently delete stuff you didn't want to that way.

And no, I don't think there is a way to retrieve deleted files.