Deleting a directory along with sub-folders

Introduction

First of all, let me tell you that this is my first contribution to CodeProject though I have been programming in C++ for more than five years now. Having said that, I think, I have good reasons to keep my first article short and simple for beginners.

Deleting a directory structure

The Windows API RemoveDirectory() function deletes an existing empty directory. If the directory is not empty, function fails with a return value zero. But most of the times, we call a function for removing a directory, what we want is to delete the directory structure completely including all files and sub-folders in it.

If you want this, there's DeleteDirectory() function to achieve it.

Source Code

BOOL DeleteDirectory(const TCHAR* sPath) {
    HANDLE hFind;  // file handle
    WIN32_FIND_DATA FindFileData;

    TCHAR DirPath[MAX_PATH];
    TCHAR FileName[MAX_PATH];

    _tcscpy(DirPath,sPath);
    _tcscat(DirPath,"\\*");    // searching all files
    _tcscpy(FileName,sPath);
    _tcscat(FileName,"\\");

    hFind = FindFirstFile(DirPath,&FindFileData); // find the first file
    if(hFind == INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE) return FALSE;
    _tcscpy(DirPath,FileName);
        
    bool bSearch = true;
    while(bSearch) { // until we finds an entry
        if(FindNextFile(hFind,&FindFileData)) {
            if(IsDots(FindFileData.cFileName)) continue;
            _tcscat(FileName,FindFileData.cFileName);
            if((FindFileData.dwFileAttributes & FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY)) {

                // we have found a directory, recurse
                if(!DeleteDirectory(FileName)) { 
                    FindClose(hFind); 
                    return FALSE; // directory couldn't be deleted
                }
                RemoveDirectory(FileName); // remove the empty directory
                _tcscpy(FileName,DirPath);
            }
            else {
                if(FindFileData.dwFileAttributes & FILE_ATTRIBUTE_READONLY)
                    _chmod(FileName, _S_IWRITE); // change read-only file mode
                if(!DeleteFile(FileName)) {  // delete the file
                    FindClose(hFind); 
                    return FALSE; 
                }                 
                _tcscpy(FileName,DirPath);
            }
        }
        else {
            if(GetLastError() == ERROR_NO_MORE_FILES) // no more files there
            bSearch = false;
            else {
                // some error occured, close the handle and return FALSE
                FindClose(hFind); 
                return FALSE;
            }

        }

    }
    FindClose(hFind);  // closing file handle
 
    return RemoveDirectory(sPath); // remove the empty directory

}

DeleteDirectory() function uses a small companion IsDot() for checking '.' and '..' directory entries.

BOOL IsDots(const TCHAR* str) {
    if(_tcscmp(str,".") && _tcscmp(str,"..")) return FALSE;
    return TRUE;
}

Explanation

DeleteDirectory() is a recursive function which navigates through a directory structure using FindFirstFile() and FindNextFile() APIs. If it finds a file, it deletes it. On the other hand, if it finds a directory entry, it just calls itself to recursively delete the directory. It returns TRUE on success and FALSE on failure.

That's all there's to it.

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The GNU General Public License (GPLv3)