unlink and -U

bengmau has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi I want to delete the contents of a directory and all it's subdirectories and files under it. Perl says you can add -U to include subdirectories but it's unsafe to your file system. Is it unstable or just dangerous to logic errors (if you do unlink(C:\\)? rmdir only removes the subdirectories if they are empty. I don't want to traverse a directory.. I rather shell out if that is necessary.

Comment on unlink and -U

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Re: unlink and -U by Zaxo (Archbishop) on Jun 25, 2002 at 15:32 UTC
`use File::Path qw( rmtree );` Please note the caveat about errors at the end its perldoc. Update: File::Path exports mktree and rmtree by default, so `use File::Path;` will suffice. After Compline, Zaxo	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: unlink and -U by bronto (Priest) on Jun 25, 2002 at 15:40 UTC
Since you cite C:\\, I suppose you are on a Windows platform. If you prefer to shell out of perl you could try running a `deltree` from inside your script, but I think that you should really seriously consider Zaxo's `File::Path` hint. Ciao! `--bronto` -- # Another Perl edition of a song: # The End, by The Beatles END { $you->take($love) eq $you->made($love) ; }	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: unlink and -U by flounder99 (Friar) on Jun 25, 2002 at 15:47 UTC
If you are using win9x you can use `system "deltree /Y", $path;` to delete a directory. On Win2k/WinNT you can use `system "rmdir /S/Q", $path;` -- flounder	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: unlink and -U by robobunny (Friar) on Jun 25, 2002 at 15:33 UTC
i think you want rm -fr instead of rmdir, but you had better have VERY good error checking if you do that :)	[reply]