{"id":11071,"date":"2012-02-22T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2012-02-22T00:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.technet.microsoft.com\/heyscriptingguy\/2012\/02\/22\/the-best-way-to-use-powershell-to-delete-folders\/"},"modified":"2012-02-22T00:01:00","modified_gmt":"2012-02-22T00:01:00","slug":"the-best-way-to-use-powershell-to-delete-folders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/the-best-way-to-use-powershell-to-delete-folders\/","title":{"rendered":"The Best Way to Use PowerShell to Delete Folders"},"content":{"rendered":"

Summary<\/b>: Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, discusses three ways to use Windows PowerShell to delete folders and then selects the best.<\/p>\n

\"Hey,<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> Hey, Scripting Guy! I have a question. I occasionally need to delete a large number of folders. What is the easiest way to do this?<\/p>\n

—BR<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\"Hey,<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> Hello BR,<\/p>\n

Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is here. There are just as many ways to delete directories by using Windows PowerShell as there are ways to create new directories. Yesterday, I discussed four ways to create new folders by using Windows PowerShell<\/a>. Today I want to talk about deleting directories, and I will show you three ways to delete folders. Unlike yesterday, I want to talk about what I consider the best way to delete a directory first.<\/p>\n

Method 1: Use native cmdlets<\/h3>\n

To delete folders, I like to use the Remove-Item <\/b>cmdlet. There is an alias for the Remove-Item<\/b> cmdlet called rd<\/b>. <\/i>Unlike the md<\/b> <\/i>function, rd<\/b> <\/i>is simply an alias for Remove-Item<\/b>. The following command reveals this information.<\/p>\n

PS C:\\> Get-Alias rd<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CommandType     Name                               Definition<\/p>\n

———–     —-                               ———-<\/p>\n

Alias           rd                                 Remove-Item<\/p>\n

One of the main reasons I like to use the Remove-Item<\/b> cmdlet to delete folders is that it implements the WhatIf <\/i>switch. This means that I can run a command, such as deleting a bunch of folders, and see exactly which folders the command will remove. This technique is shown in the image that follows.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

After I examine the information that is returned by the WhatIf <\/i>switch, I use the Up arrow to retrieve the command, and I then use the backspace to remove the –whatif<\/b> portion of the command. After it is edited, I run the command, and no information returns from the Remove-Item<\/b> cmdlet. This command is shown here.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

OK, I deleted my test directories, so it is time to create some new ones. The following code creates four test directories off of the root.<\/p>\n

PS C:\\> 1..4 | % {md “test$_”}<\/p>\n

  <\/p>\n

    Directory: C:\\<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mode                LastWriteTime     Length Name<\/p>\n

—-                ————-     —— —-<\/p>\n

d—-         2\/21\/2012  11:10 AM            test1<\/p>\n

d—-         2\/21\/2012  11:10 AM            test2<\/p>\n

d—-         2\/21\/2012  11:10 AM            test3<\/p>\n

d—-         2\/21\/2012  11:10 AM            test4<\/p>\n

To ensure that the test folders appear in the place I am expecting, I use the dir<\/b> <\/i>command (alias for Get-ChildItem<\/b>) as shown here.<\/p>\n

PS C:\\> dir c:\\test*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

    Directory: C:\\<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mode                LastWriteTime     Length Name<\/p>\n

—-                ————-     —— —-<\/p>\n

d—-         2\/21\/2012  11:10 AM            test1<\/p>\n

d—-         2\/21\/2012  11:10 AM            test2<\/p>\n

d—-         2\/21\/2012  11:10 AM            test3<\/p>\n

d—-         2\/21\/2012  11:10 AM            test4<\/p>\n

Method 2: FileSystemObject still works<\/h3>\n

Now, it is time to look at another method for deleting directories: the use of FileSystemObject<\/b>. <\/i>I first need to create an instance of FileSystemObject<\/b>, <\/i>then I can use the DeleteFolder<\/b> <\/i>method. These two commands are shown here.<\/p>\n

$fso = New-Object -ComObject scripting.filesystemobject<\/p>\n

$fso.DeleteFolder(“C:\\test*”)<\/p>\n

The use of the commands, in addition to the use of the dir<\/b> <\/i>command to check the status of the four test folders are shown in the image that follows.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

Method 3: Use .NET classes<\/h3>\n

The third way I want to illustrate uses the .NET Framework System.IO.Directory<\/i><\/a> <\/i>class to delete a folder. It is a bit more complicated. For one thing, it does not like wild cards in the path. An example of this is shown in the image that follows.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

The solution is to use Windows PowerShell to obtain the folders to delete, and then use the ForEach-Object <\/b>cmdlet to call the method. The code to do this is shown here.<\/p>\n

dir C:\\test* | foreach { [io.directory]::delete($_.fullname) }<\/p>\n

The use of the command and the associated output are shown in the image that follows.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

BR, that is all there is to using Windows PowerShell to delete folders. Join me tomorrow when I talk about more cool stuff.<\/p>\n

I invite you to follow me on Twitter<\/a> and Facebook<\/a>. If you have any questions, send email to me at scripter@microsoft.com<\/a>, or post your questions on the Official Scripting Guys Forum<\/a>. See you tomorrow. Until then, peace.<\/p>\n

Ed Wilson, Microsoft Scripting Guy<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summary: Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, discusses three ways to use Windows PowerShell to delete folders and then selects the best.  Hey, Scripting Guy! I have a question. I occasionally need to delete a large number of folders. What is the easiest way to do this? —BR  Hello BR, Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":596,"featured_media":87096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[11,3,12,45],"class_list":["post-11071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scripting","tag-folders","tag-scripting-guy","tag-storage","tag-windows-powershell"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

Summary: Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, discusses three ways to use Windows PowerShell to delete folders and then selects the best.  Hey, Scripting Guy! I have a question. I occasionally need to delete a large number of folders. What is the easiest way to do this? —BR  Hello BR, Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/596"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}