Deleting a Directory Along with Sub-Folders

Introduction

First of all, let me tell you that this is my first contribution to CodeGuru although 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, simple, and for beginners.

Deleting a Directory Structure

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

If you want this ability, here’s the DeleteDirectory() function to acheive 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,”\”);
   // find the first file
   hFind = FindFirstFile(DirPath,&FindFileData);
   if(hFind == INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE) return FALSE;
   _tcscpy(DirPath,FileName);
   bool bSearch = true;
   while(bSearch) {    // until we find 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
            }
            // remove the empty directory
            RemoveDirectory(FileName);
             _tcscpy(FileName,DirPath);
         }
         else {
            if(FindFileData.dwFileAttributes &
               FILE_ATTRIBUTE_READONLY)
               // change read-only file mode
                  _chmod(FileName, _S_IWRITE);
                  if(!DeleteFile(FileName)) {    // delete the file
                    FindClose(hFind);
                    return FALSE;
               }
               _tcscpy(FileName,DirPath);
         }
      }
      else {
         // no more files there
         if(GetLastError() == ERROR_NO_MORE_FILES)
         bSearch = false;
         else {
            // some error occurred; close the handle and return FALSE
               FindClose(hFind);
               return FALSE;
         }
      }
   }
   FindClose(hFind);                  // close the file handle
   return RemoveDirectory(sPath);     // remove the empty directory
}

The 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 that navigates through a directory structure using the 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.