Delete files or folder recursively on Windows CMD

Question

The other answers didn't work for me, but this did:

del /s /q *.svn
rmdir /s /q *.svn

/q disables Yes/No prompting

/s means delete the file(s) from all subdirectories.

Please execute the following steps:

1. Open the command prompt
2. Change directory to the required path

3. Give the following command

   del /S *.svn
   

You can use this in the bat script:

rd /s /q "c:\folder a"

Now, just change c:\folder a to your folder's location. Quotation is only needed when your folder name contains spaces.

RMDIR path_to_folder /S

ex. RMDIR "C:\tmp" /S

Note that you'll be prompted if you're really going to delete the "C:\tmp" folder. Combining it with /Q switch will remove the folder silently (ex. RMDIR "C:\tmp" /S /Q)

For file deletion, I wrote following simple batch file which deleted all .pdf's recursively:

del /s /q "\\ad1pfrtg001\AppDev\ResultLogs\*.pdf"
del /s /q "\\ad1pfrtg001\Project\AppData\*.pdf"

Even for the local directory we can use it as:

del /s /q "C:\Project\*.pdf"

The same can be applied for directory deletion where we just need to change del with rmdir.

If you want to delete a specific extension recursively, use this:

For /R "C:\Users\Desktop\saleh" %G IN (*.ppt) do del "%G"

You could also do:

del /s /p *.{your extension here}

The /p will prompt you for each found file, if you're nervous about deleting something you shouldn't.