Recursive Directory Tree Deletion in Windows

[gaggio]

Well, here's a little script request that I'm sure some of you, my friends, have already come across at some point...

I have a directory tree, containing MANY files and MANY subdirectories, and I would like to be able to delete directories matching a specified pattern along with all the files (and maybe subdirectories) that they contain... something that the poor DEL command is far from being able to do!

Thanks for a quick help.

[cwest]

I think you want File::Path and File::Find.

--
Casey
   I am a superhero.

[arturo]

Probably what you want is File::Find, which will recurse subdirectories for you and you can specify what to do with each file. Read up on it around this site, there are a number of threads concerning how to use it.

Philosophy can be made out of anything -- or less

[Limo]

Well, File::Find should help you out. But if not, do a SuperSearch on File::Find.

[djw]

Like the others said use File::Find::finddepth to recursively toast directories (obviously be very careful with this as it acts exactly like rm -r). If you have the perl cookbook there is an explination on page 325 of this exact thing.

If you don't have that then take a look at the code in the File:Find module (win32: %perl_install_dir%\lib\File\Find.pm ).

Also remember that the 'rmdir' command won't delete directories if they have files and/or subdirectories still in them.


Thanks,
djw

[OzzyOsbourne]

You can pick out what you need...

# *********************************
# Call Modules
# *********************************

use File::Find;
use File::Copy;
use Getopt::Std;
getopts('d:h');

# *********************************
# Initialize variables
# *********************************

$server='server104';
$dir1='\\\\'."$server".'\\d$';
$agedays=60; #defaults agedays to 60

# *********************************
# Process arguments ([h]elp,[d]ays)
# *********************************

if ($opt_h){
    die "\agecmd.pl -d[days to age]\n";
}

if ($opt_d){
    if ($opt_d gt 9){ #tests for strings
        die "Error: days option must be a number.  Use agecmd.pl -d[da
+ys to age]\n";
    }else{
    $agedays=$opt_d;
    }
}

# *********************************
# Do date calculations
# *********************************

@xtime=localtime(time);
$day=$xtime[3]+1;
$month=$xtime[4]+1;
$year=$xtime[5]+1900;
$hours=$xtime[2];
$mins=$xtime[1];
$secs=$xtime[0];
$logname='//server1/d$/'."ftp$month$day$year$hours$mins$secs".'.log';

$agesecs=60*60*24*$agedays;    #converts $agedays to seconds
$daysago=time-$agesecs;        #the time stamp of $agedays ago in seco
+nds
$daysago2=localtime($daysago);    #the time stamp of $agedays ago in w
+ords - mainly for printing


# *********************************
# Find the files (no dir) on the server
# *********************************

print "finding files to be aged\.\.\.\n";
find(\&wanted, $dir1);

sub wanted {
    $filesecs = (stat("$File::Find::dir/$_"))[9]; #GETS THE 9TH ELEMEN
+T OF file STAT - THE MODIFIED TIME
    $filesecs2=localtime($filesecs);
    if ($filesecs<$daysago && -f){ #-f=regular files, eliminates DIR p
+.367 
        push (@files,"$File::Find::dir/$_");
        push (@files,"$filesecs2");
    }
    print'.';
}

# *********************************
# replace '/' with '\' in file names
# *********************************

foreach (@files){
    s/\//\\/g;
}

# *********************************
# Write to Log
# *********************************

%filehash=@files; #puts the array into a hash for easy printing.  Key=
+file, Value=date
open OUT, ">$logname" or die "Cannot open $out for write :$!";
print OUT "FTP server aging log generated by PERL script\n";
print OUT "Script written by Ozzy on 4/18/00\n";
print OUT "Files deleted from \\\\$server on ".localtime(time)."\n";
print OUT "Files deleted before $daysago2\n";
print OUT "Files were aged $agedays days\n\n";
print OUT "File Listing:\n\n";
foreach $filename (sort keys %filehash){
    print OUT "$filename    $filehash{$filename}\n";
}
close OUT;


# *********************************
# Delete files
# *********************************

print "\nDeleting all files before $daysago2";
#unlink %filehash;
print "\nScript complete.";

-OzzyOsbourne

[the_slycer]

As it happens I was working on something similar to this last nite. I spent a couple of hours on it before I discovered File::Find - I really have to read more, might be able to stop duplicating effort. Anyhow, here is the code that I wrote, someone let me know what problems there are.. other than the obvious dup of effort :-).

use strict;

unless ($ARGV[0]){
    print "Please enter a string to look for: ";
    $ARGV[0]=<STDIN>;
    chomp @ARGV;
}

my $delkey = $ARGV[0];
my $startdir="c:/blah";
my (@dirs,
    @newdirs,
    @dellist);


print "searching $startdir\n";

#build a list of files/dirs:
my @list = glob("$startdir*");

#run through the list, if a dir, goes to @dir array (with a / at the e
+nd)
foreach (@list){             
    push (@dirs => "$_/") if -d;
    if (/.*$delkey*/oi){
        push (@dellist => "$_/") if -d;
    }
}

#call the subroutine - this does the same thing on the next set of dir
+s down
build(@dirs);

#if there are further subdirs, call the sub again
while (@newdirs){
    build($newdirs[0]);
    shift(@newdirs);
}

sub build{
    my @dirs=@_;
    while (@dirs){
    my $dir = shift (@dirs);
    print "searching $dir\n";
    my @list = glob("$dir*");
    foreach (@list){
        push (@newdirs => "$_/") if -d;
        if (/.*$delkey*/oi){
                push (@dellist => "$_/") if -d;
        }
    }
    }
}

foreach (reverse @dellist){
    print "found: $_ to delete\n";
    chdir "$_" || die "Unable to change to $_ : $!";
    unlink (<*>);
    chdir "$startdir" || die "Unable to change back to $startdir : $!"
+;
    rmdir "$_" || die "Unable to rmdir on $_ : $!";
}

[gaggio]

I am so mean, that I even give the script away now.
I think that you really should keep voting me down! (there are always going to be things that I won't understand in the world, even in nice places like PM:-( )

Note: the script might have to be run several times, because it does not delete directories when they still have files in them. - Just keep running it until 0 file and 0 directory are deleted.



#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w

use File::Find;

$workingdir = 'C:/TEMP/';

$countdirs = 0;
$countfiles = 0;
$testmode = 0;

@extensions = ('txt','obj'); #files to remove
@directories = ('win32-VC60','CVS','Cvs'); #directories to remove (rec
+ursively with all the files/subs in them)
@anymatches = ('ChangeLog'); #other special matches to remove as well

find(\&processmatch, $workingdir);

print "\n$countfiles file(s) and $countdirs director(y)(ies) were dele
+ted.\n\n";

sub processmatch{

  # Note: we are chdir in the current directory!

  $saved = $_;

  $name = $File::Find::name;

  $deleteflag = 0;

  foreach $ext(@extensions)
  {
    if($name =~ /.*\.$ext/)
    {
       $deleteflag = 1;
    }
  }
  
  foreach $dir(@directories)
  {
    if($name =~ /.*\/$dir.*/)
    {
       $deleteflag = 1;
    }
  }

  foreach $any(@anymatches)
  {
    if($name =~ /.*$any.*/)
    {
       $deleteflag = 1;      
    }
  }

  if($deleteflag == 1)
  {
    if (-d $name) 
    {
       if(!$testmode) 
     {
          rmdir $name;
       }
       print "$name\n";
     $countdirs++;
    }
    else 
    {
       if(!$testmode) 
     {
          unlink $saved;
       }
       print "$saved\n";
       $countfiles++;
    }
  }
  $_ = $saved;
}


BTW: Thanks for the persons who helped me!

[takshaka]

the script might have to be run several times, because it does not delete directories when they still have files in them. - Just keep running it until 0 file and 0 directory are deleted.

Use finddepth() instead of find() to have File::Find report all of a directory's entries before reporting the directory name itself. Depth-first searching allows you do clean out a directory before you try to delete it.

[Anonymous Monk]

Am I missing something, or is the underlying OS command relevant here?

C:\WINDOWS>deltree -?
Deletes a directory and all the subdirectories and files in it.

To delete one or more files and directories:
DELTREE [/Y] [drive:]path [[drive:]path[...]]

  /Y              Suppresses prompting to confirm you want to delete t
+he subdirectory.
  [drive:]path    Specifies the name of the directory you want to dele
+te.

Note: Use DELTREE cautiously. Every file and subdirectory within the s
+pecified directory will be deleted.

[the_slycer]

First - he only wants to recursively delete directories that match a particular string. Secondly - deltree is suspiciously missing on Windows 2000 :-(

[$CBAS]

Win2K uses `rmdir`, no more deltree (same functionality though)