PHP File handling Deleting files and directories
Example
Deleting files
The unlink function deletes a single file and returns whether the operation was successful.
$filename = '/path/to/file.txt';
if (file_exists($filename)) {
$success = unlink($filename);
if (!$success) {
throw new Exception("Cannot delete $filename");
}
}
Deleting directories, with recursive deletion
On the other hand, directories should be deleted with rmdir. However, this function only deletes empty directories. To delete a directory with files, delete the files in the directories first. If the directory contains subdirectories, recursion may be needed.
The following example scans files in a directory, deletes member files/directories recursively, and returns the number of files (not directories) deleted.
function recurse_delete_dir(string $dir) : int {
$count = 0;
// ensure that $dir ends with a slash so that we can concatenate it with the filenames directly
$dir = rtrim($dir, "/\\") . "/";
// use dir() to list files
$list = dir($dir);
// store the next file name to $file. if $file is false, that's all -- end the loop.
while(($file = $list->read()) !== false) {
if($file === "." || $file === "..") continue;
if(is_file($dir . $file)) {
unlink($dir . $file);
$count++;
} elseif(is_dir($dir . $file)) {
$count += recurse_delete_dir($dir . $file);
}
}
// finally, safe to delete directory!
rmdir($dir);
return $count;
}
