Is there a way to do this? I have a folder structure as such:
A/
Folder/
B/
Folder/
C/
Folder/
D/
Folder/
And I want to delete all of the "Folder/"s, along with all of their contents. My first guess was
rmdir /S /Q *\Folder
but received an error on the *. This has come up a few times in the past days, so I figured I'd get the more efficient way than going into each folder, because that wasn't fun.
Have you try this ?
for /D %i in ("C:\Directory\*") do RD /S /Q "%i"
Put double % if you want to do this in batch file
This should display the rd command for every directory that matches the folde? filespec under the current tree.
The wildcard is necessary so check the output before removing the echo
#echo off
for /d /r %%a in (folde?) do echo rd /s /q "%%a"
pause
Related
For example to go from this:
directory1/
101/online/img1.png
102/online/img2.png
103/online/img3.png
To this:
directory1/
101/img1.png
102/img2.png
103/img3.png
In this example, 101 (and 102, 103...) directories contain only a single directory online, which is always of the same name. However, online directory may contain multiple files inside, but no directories.
I am looking for an automated way to manipulate my files like that, as I have a big list of such cases. I am looking for a Windows Command Prompt or Powershell solution.
New answer and updated
This from the command line:
pushd directory1
for /D %D in (*) do move /Y %D\online\*.* %D && rmdir /s /q %D\online
popd
Or this from a cmd file:
pushd directory1
for /D %%D in (*) do move /Y %%D\online\*.* %%D && rmdir /s /q %%D\online
popd
I have a folder with multiple subfolders under it. I would like to delete all test folders under the subfolders/example. How can I do this using windows batch script? Note that there is no test folder in some.
I know how to delete mainfolder/subfolder1/example/test. But am stuck with recursively deleting under each subfolder i.e delete mainfolder/*/example/test.
TIA
E.g:
mainfolder
subfolder1
source
example
test
subfolder2
source
example
test
subfolderX
source
example
for /r "c:\sourcedir" /d %a in (*) do if /i "%~nxa"=="test" echo rd /s /q "%a"
direct from the prompt - double each % to use as a batch line.
replace c:\sourcedir as appropriate
required rd is merely echoed to show what he script intends to do. Remove the echo keyword after testing to actually perform the deletion.
I recommend looking at ss64.com's CMD.EXE reference, specifically the DIR, FINDSTR, and FOR commands.
for /f %i in ('dir /s /a:d /b ^| findstr /i /e "example\test"') do rmdir /s %i
appears to be the appropriate command for what you have requested.
Notes on DIR: /S - Subdirectories, /A:D - directories only ("Attribute:Directory"), /B - "bare", no headers or footers, just the full pathname.
Notes on FINDSTR: /I - Case-insensitive, /E - Match at end-of-string
Verbose descriptive summary of command: Create a list of directories, including all subdirectories, and select only those that end in "example\test", then remove each of them, including all files and subdirectories in them.
for /R "mainfolder" /D %%a in (example\te?t) do rd /S "%a"
The only inconvenient of this method is that the name of the target folder must be given as a wild-card, so you must give a name that does not include any other undesired folder. If the name is given with no wild-card, the for command may include other folders.
You just need to iterate through the main directories, and check for the existence of the directory that you want to delete:
for /D %%d in (mainfolder\*) do if exist "%%d\example\test" rd /s /q "%%d\example\test"
I need to delete the entire contents of a directory (nested folders and all) without deleting the directory itself. Recreating the directory after the fact is not an option as it is being locked by the running process and delete of it would fail.
So far I have the following:
rd /s /q dir1
rd /s /q dir2
rd /s /q dir3
del /q /f *
It works, but the obvious problem is that I have to update this script every time the set of first-level directories changes.
On UNIX, I would solve this like this:
rm -rf *
What is the Windows equivalent?
Assuming that you are executing the command from the top-level directory:
for /d %X in (*.*) do rd /s /q %X
If you are executing this from a script, you must use double percent signs:
for /d %%X in (*.*) do rd /s /q %%X
If you need to delete the files in the top-level directory as well, add this to the script:
del /q /f *
I know this is an old question with an old answer, but I've found a simpler way to do this and thought of sharing it.
You can step into the target directory and use the rd command. Since Windows will not allow you to delete any files or directories currently in use, and you are making use of the target directory by stepping into it, you'll delete all the contents, except the target directory itself.
cd mydir
rd /s /q .
You'll get a message saying:
The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process.
This will occur when, after deleting all the contents, the rd command fails to delete the current directory, because you're standing in it. But you'll see this is not an actual error if you echo the last exit code, which will be 0.
echo %errorlevel%
0
It's what I'm using and it works fine. I hope this helps.
I have the directory structure /foo/bar/fooBar/.. . I want to write a Windows command where I can mention the path till foo directory and it deletes all the files and directory recursively in /foo, but it should NOT delete the foo directory.
I have been using rmdir /q /s [path to foo] but this command deletes the foo directory as well. Let me know if there is any command(s) to accomplish this.
rd /s /q /path/to/foo
md /path/to/foo
del /f /s /q DirectoryWhichContainsFilesToDelete/\*
This will delete all files in the folder DirectoryWhichContainsFilesToDelete without deleting the folder itself.
Have fun :)
I had been scratching my head on this one as well. It is easy enough to create a for loop that uses rmdir however it leaves behind folders that have spaces in the long names. It is possible to manipulate a dir list and get the 8.3 filenames however here is a much simpler solution.
Create an empty folder then;
robocopy \empty_folder \folder_with_sub_folders /PURGE
All subfolders & files will be deleted.
del X /f /s /q
rd X /s /q
this WILL remove the ROOt directory though. make it again with
md X
or make a copy of it first.
otherwise you'll have to do batch funkiness
dir X /ad /b
will give you a list of the immediate subdirectories of X. you can work out the rest
I was looking for a simple command to delete all files in a directory recursively but leaving the directory structure unchanged. So, maybe this could be interesting ;)
for /f "delims=" %i in ('dir /B /S /A:-DH') do #del /F /Q /A:H "%i"
The command 'dir /B /S /A:-D' lists only files (/A:-D) in current directory recursively (/S) without 'dir' summary report (/B). The 'for' loops through each full line (/delims=) and executes the delete command, forced and quiet. I additionally used the hidden flag (/H) both for listing and deletion for some mysterious (e.g. thumbs.db) files.
deltree /foo/* should work fine.
I have used this in a batch file in the past. It uses a for loop to navigate the directory structure.
Here I remove the cvs sub directories off of a tree, needed when copying from one branch to another.
#echo off
if /I exist CVS. rd CVS /s /q >nul
for /F %%z in ('dir cvs /ad /s /b') do echo %%z && rd /s /q %%z
echo Batchfile %0 is complete
Try to use Powershell:
powershell -Command "Remove-Item '\foo\*' -Recurse -Force"
To prevent deleting of the foo directory try change directory to foo prior to the delete such as:
cd c:\foo
rd /s /q c:\foo
This will delete all the files and folders under foo but NOT foo. An error message will be displayed as follow "The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process."
I need to write a command in a .bat file that recursively deletes all the folders starting with a certain string. How may I achieve this ?
This is the complete answer you are looking for:
FOR /D /R %%X IN (certain_string*) DO RD /S /Q "%%X"
where obviously you need to replace certain_string with the string your folders start with.
This deletes RECURSIVELY as you asked (I mean it goes throught all folders and subfolders).
How about:
for /d %a in (certain_string*) do rd /s %a
This will work from the command prompt. Inside a batch file, you would have to double the %s, as usual:
#echo off
for /d %%a in (certain_string*) do rd /s %%a
Unfinished, I think. If you meant "Recursively go down a directory hierarchy to delete all folders starting with a certain string", then the following might suffice:
for /f "delims=" %%x in ('dir /b /ad abc*') do rd /s /q "%%x"
This will recurse into the directory tree, finding all folders starting with "abc", iterate over that list and removing each folder.
Maybe you need to wrap an if exist around the rd depending on the order in which directories are found and returned. In general, iterating over something and changing it at the same time is rarely a good idea but sometimes it works :-)
rm -rf -- "Directory name"
Ex : rm -rf -- "-2096378"
Above command will deletes the folders/directories starting with - or wildcard characters
FOR /F "tokens=*" %i IN ('DIR **[[SearchTerm]]** /A:D /s /b') do rd /S / Q %i