How to empty a folder tree?

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G

Guest

It would be useful to me learning how I can delete files from some base
folder including all its subfolders, but keeping the folder structure, so I
dont have to recreate them every time I backup and cleanup.

Every other method, I cant think of, to achieve the goal is fine to me as
well, of course.

thank you
ric
 
From the Command Prompt navigate to the first directory in the tree and
issue:

del *.* /s /q

Be certain that you are in the right directory! It will erase all the
files from the directory in which the command was issued on down! The
files will be permanently deleted, del does not use the Recycle Bin!

John
 
John said:
From the Command Prompt navigate to the first directory in the tree
and issue:

del *.* /s /q

Be certain that you are in the right directory! It will erase all the
files from the directory in which the command was issued on down! The
files will be permanently deleted, del does not use the Recycle Bin!

John
Click to expand...

In XP Pro you don't need either of the switches. Just del *.* in the
highest level directory will do it. It surprised me, but it worked, and of
course left all the subdirectories in place. The switches don't hurt
anything, of course.
I don't care for /Q personally, because I like the 'Are you Sure'
reminder message.

HTH
Pop`
 
Poprivet said:
In XP Pro you don't need either of the switches. Just del *.* in the
highest level directory will do it. It surprised me, but it worked, and of
course left all the subdirectories in place. The switches don't hurt
anything, of course.
I don't care for /Q personally, because I like the 'Are you Sure'
reminder message.
Click to expand...

I find it surprising that on your XP Pro del *.* without any switches
would erase files in subfolders! The expected results of the command is
that it erases all the files in the current directory only. It would
also surprise me that this would be specific to XP Pro but not XP Home.
I wonder if any other users here are seeing the same behaviour with
the command. I can't verify right now but maybe other users could give
us their results. It seems to me it would be a bug if it behaves that way!

John
 
Oh Thanks John, it worked fine!
Also, in my xp pro there is no bug: the switch is needed.
I'd also keep the /q switch, it's safer and prevents from hurrying too much...
Regards,
Ricardo
 
SingaporeWebDesign said:
Hello,

Perform an empty search on the folder, sort by type (folders will go to
top), select all the files by selecting the first file item and then hitting
shift-end to select, hit delete.
Click to expand...

Nice method, unless the number of files is too large...I dont like to wait
for hard drive scanning and select 10.000 files or more...beside that I'll
keep it in mind, good trick.
Thank you so much. Bye,
Ricardo
 
John said:
....

I find it surprising that on your XP Pro del *.* without any
switches would erase files in subfolders! The expected results of
the command is that it erases all the files in the current directory
only. It would also surprise me that this would be specific to XP Pro but
not XP
Home. I wonder if any other users here are seeing the same behaviour
with the command. I can't verify right now but maybe other users could
give us their results. It seems to me it would be a bug if it behaves
that way!
John
Click to expand...

You're right, of course! My bad, and a big blunder at that!
It happened as I said it did, but ... because I had set the environment
variables! So, I CAN reproduce it, but ... only by setting those same
variables again. My bad!

Actually I'm kicking myself for being so stupid because I work at the
Command Prompt all the time and obviously wasn't paying attention because I
know better!! Won't happen again; I hope!!!
So much for "proofing" it before I posted.

Regards,

Pop`
 
ricardo.l said:
:




Oh Thanks John, it worked fine!
Also, in my xp pro there is no bug: the switch is needed.
I'd also keep the /q switch, it's safer and prevents from hurrying too much...
Click to expand...

You're welcome. Thanks fo the follow up.

John
 
Poprivet said:
You're right, of course! My bad, and a big blunder at that!
It happened as I said it did, but ... because I had set the environment
variables! So, I CAN reproduce it, but ... only by setting those same
variables again. My bad!

Actually I'm kicking myself for being so stupid because I work at the
Command Prompt all the time and obviously wasn't paying attention because I
know better!! Won't happen again; I hope!!!
So much for "proofing" it before I posted.
Click to expand...

I kind of thought that something wasn't right, I thought for sure that
something was wrong with your XP installation.

John
 
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