Delete directory with files in it?

There are at least two options available nowadays.

  1. Before deleting the folder, delete all its files and folders (and this means recursion!). Here is an example:

    public static function deleteDir($dirPath) {
        if (! is_dir($dirPath)) {
            throw new InvalidArgumentException("$dirPath must be a directory");
        }
        if (substr($dirPath, strlen($dirPath) - 1, 1) != "https://stackoverflow.com/") {
            $dirPath .= "https://stackoverflow.com/";
        }
        $files = glob($dirPath . '*', GLOB_MARK);
        foreach ($files as $file) {
            if (is_dir($file)) {
                self::deleteDir($file);
            } else {
                unlink($file);
            }
        }
        rmdir($dirPath);
    }
    
  2. And if you are using 5.2+ you can use a RecursiveIterator to do it without implementing the recursion yourself:

    $dir="samples" . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . 'sampledirtree';
    $it = new RecursiveDirectoryIterator($dir, RecursiveDirectoryIterator::SKIP_DOTS);
    $files = new RecursiveIteratorIterator($it,
                 RecursiveIteratorIterator::CHILD_FIRST);
    foreach($files as $file) {
        if ($file->isDir()){
            rmdir($file->getRealPath());
        } else {
            unlink($file->getRealPath());
        }
    }
    rmdir($dir);
    

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