Delete files recursively in Java

Question

Is there a way to delete entire directories recursively in Java? In the normal case it is possible to delete an empty directory. However when it comes to deleting entire directories with contents, it is not that simple anymore. How do you delete entire directories with contents in Java?

Answer 1

How about a recursive method?

void delete(File f) throws IOException {
  if (f.isDirectory()) {
    for (File c : f.listFiles())
      delete(c);
  }
  if (!f.delete())
    throw new FileNotFoundException("Failed to delete file: " + f);
}

Answer 2

Maybe a solution for this problem might be to reimplement the delete method of the File class using the code from erickson's answer:

public class MyFile extends File {

  ... <- copy constructor

  public boolean delete() {
    if (f.isDirectory()) {
      for (File c : f.listFiles()) {
        return new MyFile(c).delete();
      }
    } else {
        return f.delete();
    }
  }
}

Answer 3

You should check out Apache's commons-io. It has a FileUtils class that will do what you want.

FileUtils.deleteDirectory(new File("directory"));

Answer 4

Guava has Files.deleteRecursively

Answer 5

Just saw my solution is more or less the same as erickson's, just packaged as a static method. Drop this somewhere, it's much lighter weight than installing all of Apache Commons for something that (as you can see) is quite simple.

public class FileUtils {
    /**
     * By default File#delete fails for non-empty directories, it works like "rm". 
     * We need something a little more brutual - this does the equivalent of "rm -r"
     * @param path Root File Path
     * @return true iff the file and all sub files/directories have been removed
     * @throws FileNotFoundException
     */
    public static boolean deleteRecursive(File path) throws FileNotFoundException{
        if (!path.exists()) throw new FileNotFoundException(path.getAbsolutePath());
        boolean ret = true;
        if (path.isDirectory()){
            for (File f : path.listFiles()){
                ret = ret && FileUtils.deleteRecursive(f);
            }
        }
        return ret && path.delete();
    }
}