I guess I was on the right track after all. Found this great function:
// ggarciaa at gmail dot com (04-July-2007 01:57)
// I needed to empty a directory, but keeping it
// so I slightly modified the contribution from
// stefano at takys dot it (28-Dec-2005 11:57)
// A short but powerfull recursive function
// that works also if the dirs contain hidden files
//
// $dir = the target directory
// $DeleteMe = if true delete also $dir, if false leave it alone
function SureRemoveDir($dir, $DeleteMe) {
if(!$dh = @opendir($dir)) return;
while (false !== ($obj = readdir($dh))) {
if($obj=='.' || $obj=='..') continue;
if (!@unlink($dir.'/'.$obj)) SureRemoveDir($dir.'/'.$obj, true);
}
closedir($dh);
if ($DeleteMe){
@rmdir($dir);
}
}
//SureRemoveDir('EmptyMe', false);
//SureRemoveDir('RemoveMe', true);