rmdir -p on Unices will work that way. If you say rmdir -p foo/bar/baz, it will remove foo/bar/baz, then foo/bar, and finally foo. However, it only works if these directories are all empty (since anything else wouldn’t make sense).

I suppose this is about equivalent, except it also does an rm -r on the top of the path, so if you give it foo/bar/baz it will remove foo/bar/baz and will then remove foo/bar and foo as well if they turn out empty.

use File::Path;
use File::Spec::Functions qw( splitdir catdir );

sub rmtree_path {
    my ( $path ) = @_;
    rmtree $path;
    my @path = splitdir $path;
    do { pop @path } while @path and rmdir catdir @path;
}
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Untested.

Makeshifts last the longest.