PHP Directories Removing a Directory and Its Contents

PHP Directories

Removing a Directory and Its Contents

Problem

You want to remove a directory and all of its contents, including subdirectories and their contents.

Solution

Use RecursiveDirectoryIterator and RecursiveIteratorIterator, specifying that children (files and subdirectories) should be listed before their parents:

       function obliterate_directory($dir) {

              $iter = new RecursiveDirectoryIterator($dir);

              foreach (new RecursiveIteratorIterator($iter,

                                    RecursiveIteratorIterator::CHILD_FIRST) as $f) {

                     if ($f->isDir()) {

                          rmdir($f->getPathname());

                     } else {

                          unlink($f->getPathname());

                     }

              }

              rmdir($dir);

       }

       obliterate_directory('/tmp/junk');

Discussion

Removing files, obviously, can be dangerous. Because PHP’s built-in directory removal function, rmdir(), works only on empty directories, and unlink() can’t accept shell wildcards, the RecursiveIteratorIterator must be told to provide children before parents with its CHILD_FIRST constant.