[RESOLVED] exec("rm -rf") fails but no errors/warnings

[ppowell]

rm -rf "/path/to/my/files/." 2>&1 fails in Unix, can't figure out why, no files are deleted but no errors/warnings.

I need a Unix/Windows equivalent to delete all files at once from a directory.

Please help

Thanx
Phil

[ClarkF1]

If you want to remove just the files and there aren't any subdirectories:

function emptydir($directory)
{
$files = scandir($directory);
foreach ($files as $value)
{
	if ($value != '.' && $value != '..')
	{
		unlink($directory."/".$value);	
	}
}
}

If you have sub-directories, this function works well. It'll actually delete the directory. I'm not sure if you want to do that or just empty the directory but you could recreate the directory immediately afterwards.

You only need to pass the directory name when calling the function e.g.

delete(directoryname);

function delete($directory, $empty = FALSE) {
if(substr($directory,-1) == '/')
	{
		$directory = substr($directory,0,-1);
	}
	if(!file_exists($directory) || !is_dir($directory))
	{
		return FALSE;
	}elseif(is_readable($directory))
	{
		$handle = opendir($directory);
		while (FALSE !== ($item = readdir($handle)))
		{
			if($item != '.' && $item != '..')
			{
				$path = $directory.'/'.$item;
				if(is_dir($path)) 
				{
					delete($path);
				}else{
					unlink($path);
				}
			}
		}
		closedir($handle);
		if($empty == FALSE)
		{
			if(!rmdir($directory))
			{
				return FALSE;
			}
		}
	}
	return TRUE;
}

[ppowell]

Thanx, totally appreciated, however, we're having to delete hundreds, perhaps thousands of files, each being up to 1mb each in potential size, and looping constructs in this case would be considerably resource-consuming. So I was looking for a command-line level solution instead.

Phil

[ClarkF1]

Fair enough...........

Good luck.....

[ppowell]

GOT IT!

It seems that you can't encase a directory path in Unix using wildcards as it renders the wildcard characters inert, however, in Windows you can encase a directory path using wildcards and they retain their identity.

		$pathExt = ($_ENV['windir'] || $_SERVER['windir']) ? '\\' : '/';	// WINDOWS USES BACKSLASH, OTHERS USE FORWARD SLASH AS PATH SEPARATORS
		/*-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
			New 6/14/2006: Apparently you can only encase directory paths with character delimiters such as "" in Windows if the path ends in a wildcard character;
			in flavors of Unix the wildcards would be rendered inert and interpreted as the literal part of a path, whereas in Windows the wildcards retain their identity.
			Since Unix forbids spaces in directory paths it is thus only necessary to encase the directory path within a Windows framework
		------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
		if ($_ENV['windir'] || $_SERVER['windir']) $charPathDelimiter = '"';

	// DELETE THUMBNAILS (NEW 6/13/2006: BUT KEEP THE THUMBNAIL ALBUM FOR CONSISTENCY WITH KEEPING THE SOON-EMPTY IMAGE ALBUM)
	if ($this->isSuccessful) {
	 list($removeKommand, $removeRedirect) = @array_values($this->getKommandOSArray('rmdir-force'));	// UNIX rm WILL PRODUCE ERRORS FOR WILDCARD FILE DELETION
	 $errorMsg = exec("$removeKommand $charPathDelimiter" . actual_path($locationPath) . "$pathExt*.*$charPathDelimiter $removeRedirect");
	} 

Phil