Delete directories 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

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 2

With Java 7, we can finally do this with reliable symlink detection. (I don't consider Apache's commons-io to have reliable symlink detection at this time, as it doesn't handle links on Windows created with mklink.)

For the sake of history, here's a pre-Java 7 answer, which follows symlinks.

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); }