Force a Delete

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

Oh Great Monks.
Is there any way to force a delete on a directory if it contains subdirectories and files in these subdirecotories? Or do I have to go through each sub and delete all the contents first then delete the parent directory.

Here is my code to delete the parent as a reference:

foreach $folder (@iqfolder_arr)
{ 
  $ftp_disco->rmdir("$folder");
}
[download]

That is a code snippet from my script that removes the directory but it only works if the folders are empty. I am trying to do this via ftp b/c I am already using an ftp script to get some files and back them up from a different directory. I want to try and remove folders from the same script.

Comment on Force a Delete Download Code

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Re: Force a Delete by ctilmes (Vicar) on Feb 09, 2004 at 18:21 UTC
Try rdelete from Net::FTP::Recursive.	[reply]
Re: Force a Delete by arden (Curate) on Feb 09, 2004 at 18:22 UTC
I'm afraid to say that I don't know of any ftp server programs that allow a cascading delete. You'll have to go through each folder, do a listing, delete all files, and repeat process for each folder, deleting the parent folder after all children are gone. I think if you do a Super Search you will find some examples of the code you'll need. Update: or, as ctilmes mentions, you could allow Net::FTP::Recursive to do the dirty work for you! :^) If you have access to the server via a shell, you can issue an 'rm -rf' command if it's unix/linux or 'rmdir /S /Q' if it's windows. You could have the ftp script execute this via a SSH or Telnet connection to keep it all in the same script. Update: Since you state in your previous question that you normally telnet into the server, you can use Net::Telnet.	[reply]
Re: Force a Delete by Abigail-II (Bishop) on Feb 09, 2004 at 21:40 UTC
Recursive delete of a directory is not something the RFC mandates servers implement. (Not very surprising if you look at the system call, `rmdir(2)` doesn't delete non-empty directories). If you insist on doing this via FTP, you have two options: Clean up the directories yourself by having the client traverse the directories, and deleting files. Find, write or modify an FTP server that will support this feature. You might have to modify `Net::FTP` for that as well. Abigail	[reply]