Delete directory recursively in Scala

Question

I am writing the following (with Scala 2.10 and Java 6):

import java.io._  def delete(file: File) {   if (file.isDirectory)      Option(file.listFiles).map(_.toList).getOrElse(Nil).foreach(delete(_))   file.delete } 

How would you improve it ? The code seems working but it ignores the return value of java.io.File.delete. Can it be done easier with scala.io instead of java.io ?

Answer 1

With pure scala + java way

import scala.reflect.io.Directory import java.io.File  val directory = new Directory(new File("/sampleDirectory")) directory.deleteRecursively() 

deleteRecursively() Returns false on failure

Answer 2

Try this code that throws an exception if it fails:

def deleteRecursively(file: File): Unit = {   if (file.isDirectory) {     file.listFiles.foreach(deleteRecursively)   }   if (file.exists && !file.delete) {     throw new Exception(s"Unable to delete ${file.getAbsolutePath}")   } } 

You could also fold or map over the delete if you want to return a value for all the deletes.