Question

I am attempting to delete files based on a pattern from all directories contained in a given path. I have the following but it acts like an infinite loop. When I cancel out of the loop, no files are deleted. Where am I going wrong?

def recursive_delete (dirPath, pattern)
    if (defined? dirPath and  defined? pattern && File.exists?(dirPath))
        stack = [dirPath]

        while !stack.empty?
            current = stack.delete_at(0)
            Dir.foreach(current) do |file|
                if File.directory?(file)
                    stack << current+file
                else
                    File.delete(dirPath + file) if (pattern).match(file)
                end
            end
        end

    end
end

# to call:
recursive_delete("c:\Test_Directory\", /^*.cs$/)

Answer 1

You don’t need to re-implement this wheel. Recursive file glob is already part of the core library.

Dir.glob('C:\Test_Directory\**\*.cs').each { |f| File.delete(f) }

Dir#glob lists files in a directory and can accept wildcards. ** is a super-wildcard that means “match anything, including entire trees of directories”, so it will match any level deep (including “no” levels deep: .cs files in C:\Test_Directory itself will also match using the pattern I supplied).

@kkurian points out (in the comments) that File#delete can accept a list, so this could be simplified to:

File.delete(*Dir.glob('C:\Test_Directory\**\*.cs'))