How to delete a long path in windows.

Question

OK, this isn't necessarily programming related, but it might have a programmatic solution.

When importing a project into eclipse, it somehow started creating recursive versions of the directory.

Now, when I try to delete anything, I get the message " the file name you specify is too long."

I can't delete it from the command shell. I can't delete it from explorer. I can't do ANYTHING with it. I have no idea how many copies of it Eclipse created. Eclipse was running for like a minute before I realized something was wrong and I cancelled the operation.

I can get the properties of the top level folder, and it says it contains 497 folders.

Question 1: how can I delete all this stuff in Windows?

Question 2: What the hell was eclipse thinking?

Answer 1

Have you tried deleting it from code?

Answer 2

As to Q1)

Use subst to short-cirquit the paths:

subst Q: C:\very\long\path\created\by\eclipse
Q:
del *.*

As to Q2)

Long paths are less of a problem in other OSes, and there are Windows API functions that can deal with paths longer than 255 characters, so they just did it, I guess.

Answer 3

Try using Unlocker. It is used for killing processes holding locks on files, but I think it can force-delete f-ed up files, like you have.

Answer 4

If you need to deal with paths longer than MAX_PATH, you'll have to use the Unicode versions of the Windows file APIs (e.g. DeleteFileW) and use the \\?\ prefix. You can write a short program using these APIs to enumerate these directories and delete them.

Answer 5

I had a problem similar to this with Eclipse: trying to import a project using Subclipse, it generated a deeply nested set of directories which I couldn't delete.

I did a couple of things, firstly I edited the directory names down to the shortest length possible (actually I think this was pointless). Secondly, I traversed the directory tree as deeply as possible and then cut and pasted the branch out (which makes it possible to delete the original branch), and then repeated the process.

@Charlie and @Tomalek's solutions look like they might be more elegant. I don't plan on repeating the experience to find out though.

Answer 6

UNLOCKER RULES, DUDE!

I was knocking my head to the wall the whole morning, trying to figure this out.

First of all, I don't know how this softwares can create a so long path... When I do that in .NET an exception is thrown BEFORE creating the path... so...

But I could delete the directory thanks to unlocker.

Answer 7

i'd faced the same problem using eclipse..! a zillion nested folders got created and it took up more than 500MB space!!!!

i tried a ton of things in windows and nothing worked..

finally i just rebooted using ubuntu and deleted that horrible folder.. just like that.. ubuntu doesn't seem to have any such access restrictions based on filepath length as windows does.. makes life a lot easier.. :)

Answer 8

robocopy empty_dir base_nested_dir /purge

Answer 9

The fix is simple and free! No need to rename the folders at all.

1. Download Cygwin for free.

2. use the command rm -f -r <folder-name> and wait a few moments.

I had a folder of size 1.5 GB with numerous inner folders and it worked!

Answer 10

For years i had the issue of system locked files,whenever i wanted to change or delete them windows had given error message that disk is full and it may be write protected,then after a lot of agony i found a very efficient and easy to use software for life time using this link: http://www.longpathtool.com ,this software resolved all such problems and have made my database more efficient to be handled.