Question

I know that you can remove a folder that is empty with rmdir. And I know you can clear a folder with the following three lines.

foreach($directory_path as $file) {
       unlink($file);
}

But what if one of the files is actually a sub directory. How would one get rid of that but in an infinite amount like the dual mirror effect. Is there any force delete directory in php?

Thanks

Answer 1

This function will delete a directory recursively:

function rmdir_recursive($dir) {
    foreach(scandir($dir) as $file) {
        if ('.' === $file || '..' === $file) continue;
        if (is_dir("$dir/$file")) rmdir_recursive("$dir/$file");
        else unlink("$dir/$file");
    }
    rmdir($dir);
}

This one too:

function rmdir_recursive($dir) {
    $it = new RecursiveDirectoryIterator($dir, FilesystemIterator::SKIP_DOTS);
    $it = new RecursiveIteratorIterator($it, RecursiveIteratorIterator::CHILD_FIRST);
    foreach($it as $file) {
        if ($file->isDir()) rmdir($file->getPathname());
        else unlink($file->getPathname());
    }
    rmdir($dir);
}