Question

What would be a safe and efficient way to delete all files in a directory in pure Ruby? I wrote

Dir.foreach(dir_path) {|f| File.delete(f) if f != '.' && f != '..'}

but it gives me a No such file or directory error.

Thank you.

Answer 1

You’re probably getting that error because your current working directory doesn’t match dir_path — File.delete(f) is being given just the filename for a file in dir_path. (I hope you didn’t have any important files in the current working directory with same names in the dir_path directory.)

You need to use File.join(dir_path, f) to construct the filename you wish to delete. You also need to figure out how you want to handle directories:

Dir.foreach(dir_path) do |f|
  fn = File.join(dir_path, f)
  File.delete(fn) if f != '.' && f != '..'
end

Errno::EISDIR: Is a directory - /tmp/testing/blubber
    from (irb):10:in `delete'
    from (irb):10
    from (irb):10:in `foreach'
    from (irb):10
    from :0