How to delete files subfolders in a specific directory at the command prompt in Windows

Question

Say  there is a variable called  pathtofolder   as it makes it clear it is a full path of a folder   I want to delete every single file and subfolder in this directory  but not the directory itself   But  there might be an error like  this file folder is already in use     when that happens  it should just continue and skip that file folder   Is there some command for this

User · Answer

RD stands for REMOVE Directory    S    Delete all files and subfolders          in addition to the folder itself           Use this to remove an entire folder tree    Q    Quiet - do not display YN confirmation  Example    RD  S  Q C  folder path here

User · Answer

None of the answers as posted on 2018-06-01  with the exception of the single command line posted by foxidrive  really deletes all files and all folders directories in  PathToFolder   That s the reason for posting one more answer with a very simple single command line to delete all files and subfolders of a folder as well as a batch file with a more complex solution explaining why all other answers as posted on 2018-06-01 using DEL and FOR with RD failed to clean up a folder completely   The simple single command line solution which of course can be also used in a batch file  pushd  quot  PathToFolder  quot  2 gt nul  amp  amp    rd  Q  S  quot  PathToFolder  quot  2 gt nul  amp  popd    This command line contains three commands executed one after the other  The first command PUSHD pushes current directory path on stack and next makes  PathToFolder  the current directory for running command process  This works also for UNC paths by default because of command extensions are enabled by default and in this case PUSHD creates a temporary drive letter that points to that specified network resource and then changes the current drive and directory  using the newly defined drive letter  PUSHD outputs following error message to handle STDERR if the specified directory does not exist at all   The system cannot find the path specified   This error message is suppressed by redirecting it with 2 gt nul to device NUL  The next command RD is executed only if changing current directory for current command process to specified directory was successful  i e  the specified directory exists at all  The command RD with the options  Q and  S removes a directory quietly with all subdirectories even if the specified directory contains files or folders with hidden attribute or with  read-only attribute set  The system attribute does never prevent deletion of a file or folder  Not deleted are   Folders used as the current directory for any running process  The entire folder tree to such a  folder cannot be deleted if a folder is used as the current directory for any running process   Files currently opened by any running process with file access permissions set on file open to prevent deletion of the file while opened by the running application process  Such an opened file prevents also the deletion of entire folder tree to the opened file   Files folders on which the current user has not the required  NTFS  permissions to delete the file folder which prevents also the deletion of the folder tree to this file folder    The first reason for not deleting a folder is used by this command line to delete all files and subfolders of the specified folder  but not the folder itself  The folder is made temporarily the current directory for running command process which prevents the deletion of the folder itself  Of course this results in output of an error message by command RD   The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process   File is the wrong term here as in reality the folder is being used by another process  the current command process which executed command RD  Well  in reality a folder is for the file system a special file with file attribute directory which explains this error message  But I don t want to go too deep into file system management  This error message  like all other error messages  which could occur because of the three reasons written above  is suppressed by redirecting it with 2 gt nul from handle STDERR to device NUL  The third command  POPD  is executed independently of the exit value of command RD  POPD pops the directory path pushed by PUSHD from the stack and changes the current directory for running the command process to this directory  i e  restores the initial current directory  POPD deletes the temporary drive letter created by PUSHD in case of a UNC folder path  Note  POPD can silently fail to restore the initial current directory in case of the initial current directory was a subdirectory of the directory to clean which does not exist anymore  In this special case  PathToFolder  remains the current directory  So it is advisable to run the command line above not from a subdirectory of  PathToFolder   One more interesting fact  I tried the command line also using a UNC path by sharing local directory C  Temp with share name Temp and using UNC path    COMPUTERNAME  Temp CleanTest assigned to environment variable PathToFolder on Windows 7  If the current directory on running the command line is a subdirectory of a shared local folder accessed using UNC path  i e  C  Temp CleanTest Subfolder1  Subfolder1 is deleted by RD  and next POPD fails silently in making C  Temp CleanTest Subfolder1 again the current directory resulting in Z  CleanTest remaining as the current directory for the running command process  So in this very  very special case the temporary drive letter remains until the current directory is changed for example with cd  D  SystemRoot  to a local directory really existing  Unfortunately POPD does not exit with a value greater 0 if it fails to restore the initial current directory making it impossible to detect this very special error condition using just the exit code of POPD  However  it can be supposed that nobody ever runs into this very special error case as UNC paths are usually not used for accessing local files and folders  For understanding the used commands even better  open a command prompt window  execute there the following commands  and read the help displayed for each command very carefully   pushd    popd    rd     Single line with multiple commands using Windows batch file explains the operators  amp  amp  and  amp  used here   Next let us look on the batch file solution using the command DEL to delete files in  PathToFolder  and FOR and RD to delete the subfolders in  PathToFolder    echo off setlocal EnableExtensions DisableDelayedExpansion  rem Clean the folder for temporary files if environment variable rem PathToFolder is not defined already outside this batch file  if not defined PathToFolder set  quot PathToFolder  TEMP  quot   rem Remove all double quotes from folder path  set  quot PathToFolder  PathToFolder  quot    quot   rem Did the folder path consist only of double quotes  if not defined PathToFolder goto EndCleanFolder  rem Remove a backslash at end of folder path  if  quot  PathToFolder  -1  quot      quot   quot  set  quot PathToFolder  PathToFolder  0 -1  quot   rem Did the folder path consist only of a backslash  with one or more double quotes   if not defined PathToFolder goto EndCleanFolder  rem Delete all files in specified folder including files with hidden rem or read-only attribute set  except the files currently opened by rem a running process which prevents deletion of the file while being rem opened by the application  or on which the current user has not rem the required permissions to delete the file  del  A  F  Q  quot  PathToFolder    quot   gt nul 2 gt nul  rem Delete all subfolders in specified folder including those with hidden rem attribute set recursive with all files and subfolders  except folders rem being the current directory of any running process which prevents the rem deletion of the folder and all folders above  folders containing a file rem opened by the application which prevents deletion of the file and the rem entire folder structure to this file  or on which the current user has rem not the required permissions to delete a folder or file in folder tree rem to delete  for  F  quot eol   delims  quot    I in   dir  quot  PathToFolder    quot   AD  B 2  gt nul   do rd  Q  S  quot  PathToFolder    I quot  2 gt nul   EndCleanFolder endlocal  The batch file first makes sure that environment variable PathToFolder is really defined with a folder path without double quotes and without a backslash at the end  The backslash at the end would not be a problem  but double quotes in a folder path could be problematic because of the value of PathToFolder is concatenated with other strings during batch file execution  Important are the two lines  del  A  F  Q  quot  PathToFolder    quot   gt nul 2 gt nul for  F  quot eol   delims  quot    I in   dir  quot  PathToFolder    quot   AD  B 2  gt nul   do rd  Q  S  quot  PathToFolder    I quot  2 gt nul  The command DEL is used to delete all files in the specified directory   The option  A is necessary to process really all files including files with the hidden attribute which DEL would ignore without using option  A  The option  F is necessary to force deletion of files with the read-only attribute set  The option   Q is necessary to run a quiet deletion of multiple files without prompting the user if multiple files should be really deleted   gt nul is necessary to redirect the output of the file names written to handle STDOUT to device NUL of which can t be deleted because of a file is currently opened or user has no permission to delete the file  2 gt nul is necessary to redirect the error message output for each file which can t be deleted from handle STDERR to device NUL   The commands FOR and RD are used to remove all subdirectories in specified directory  But for  D is not used because of FOR is ignoring in this case subdirectories with the hidden attribute set  For that reason for  F is used to run the following command line in a separate command process started in the background with  ComSpec   c  dir  quot  PathToFolder    quot   AD  B 2 gt nul  DIR outputs in bare format because of  B the directory entries with attribute D  i e  the names of  all subdirectories in specified directory independent on other attributes like the hidden attribute without a path  2 gt nul is used to redirect the error message output by DIR on no directory found from handle STDERR to device NUL  The redirection operator  gt  must be escaped with the caret character     on the FOR command line to be interpreted as a literal character when the Windows command interpreter processes this command line before executing the command FOR which executes the embedded dir command line in a separate command process started in the background  FOR processes the captured output written to handle STDOUT of a started command process which are the names of the subdirectories without path and never enclosed in double quotes  FOR with option  F ignores empty lines which don t occur here as DIR with option  B does not output empty lines  FOR would also ignore lines starting with a semicolon which is the default end of line character  A directory name can start with a semicolon  For that reason eol   is used to define the vertical bar character as the end-of-line character which no directory or file can have in its name  FOR would split up the line into substrings using space and horizontal tab as delimiters and would assign only the first space tab delimited string to specified loop variable I  This splitting behavior is not wanted here because of a directory name can contain one or more spaces  Therefore delims  is used to define an empty list of delimiters to disable the line splitting behavior and get  assigned to the loop variable  I  always the complete directory name  Command FOR runs the command RD for each directory name without a path which is the reason why on the RD command line the folder path must be specified once again which is concatenated with the subfolder name  For understanding the used commands and how they work  open a command prompt window  execute there the following commands  and read entirely all help pages displayed for each command very carefully   del    dir    echo    endlocal    for    goto    if    rd    rem    set    setlocal

User · Answer

ECHO OFF rem next line removes all files in temp folder DEL  A  F  Q  S   temp       rem next line cleans up the folder s content FOR  D   p IN    temp        DO RD    p   S  Q

User · Answer

Use   del  pathtofolder         s  f   q   This deletes all files and subfolders in  pathtofolder   including read-only files  and does not prompt for confirmation

User · Answer

CD  Your Folder  RMDIR  S  Q     You ll get an error message  tells you that the RMDIR command can t access the current folder  thus it can t delete it   Update   From this useful comment  thanks to Moritz Both   you may add  amp  amp  between  so RMDIR won t run if the CD command fails  e g  mistyped directory name    CD  Your Folder   amp  amp  RMDIR  S  Q     From Windows Command-Line Reference       S  Deletes a directory tree  the specified directory and all its   subdirectories  including all files         Q  Specifies quiet mode  Does not prompt for confirmation when   deleting a directory tree   Note that  q works only if  s is   specified

User · Answer

You can do it by using the following command to delete all contents and the parent folder itself            RMDIR   S    Q   drive  path

User · Answer

Use Notepad to create a text document and copy paste this   rmdir  s q   temp   mkdir   temp     Select Save As and file name      delete temp bat   Save as type  All files and click the Save button   It works on any kind of account  administrator or a standard user   Just run it   I use a temporary variable in this example  but you can use any other  PS  For Windows OS only

User · Answer

You can use this shell script to clean up the folder and files within C  Temp source   del  q  C  Temp    FOR  D   p IN   C  Temp       DO rmdir    p   s  q   Create a batch file  say  delete bat  containing the above command  Go to the location where the delete bat file is located and then run the command  delete bat

User · Answer

ECHO OFF  SET THEDIR path-to-folder  Echo Deleting all files from  THEDIR  DEL   THEDIR      F  Q  A  Echo Deleting all folders from  THEDIR  FOR  F  eol   delims     I in   dir   THEDIR      AD  B 2  gt nul   do rd  Q  S   THEDIR    I   ECHO Folder deleted   EXIT      deletes all files and folders underneath the given directory  but not the directory itself

User · Answer

rmdir  is my all time favorite command for the job  It works for deleting huge files and folders with subfolders  A backup is not created  so make sure that you have copied your files safely before running this command   RMDIR  FOLDERNAME   S  Q   This silently removes the folder and all files and subfolders

User · Answer

The simplest solution I can think of is removing the whole directory with  RD  S  Q folderPath   Then creating this directory again   MD folderPath

User · Answer

This will remove the folders and files and leave the folder behind   pushd   pathtofolder    amp  amp   rd  s  q   pathtofolder   2 gt nul  amp  popd

User · Answer

I tried several of these approaches  but none worked properly   I found this two-step approach on the site Windows Command Line   forfiles  P  pathtofolder   M    C  cmd  c if  isdir  FALSE del  file   forfiles  P  pathtofolder    M    C  cmd  c if  isdir  TRUE rmdir  S  Q  file    It worked exactly as I needed and as specified by the OP

User · Answer

To delete file   del PATH TO FILE   To delete folder with all files in it   rmdir  s  q PATH TO FOLDER   To delete all files from specific folder  not deleting folder itself  is a little bit complicated  del  s     cannot delete folders  but removes files from all subfolder  So two commands are needed   del  q PATH TO FOLDER     for  d  i in  PATH TO FOLDER      do  rmdir  s  q   i

User · Answer

I use Powershell   Remove-Item c  scripts   -recurse   It will remove the contents of the folder  not the folder itself

[windows] How to delete files/subfolders in a specific directory at the command prompt in Windows

Examples related to windows

Examples related to batch-file

Examples related to file-io

Examples related to cmd

Examples related to directory