How to make php script delete itself (and includes dir) [duplicate]

Question

How do I make script delete itself after it'll finish its work?

edit:

It's for my installation script, I want it to delete itself for security reasons (so attacker won't be able to overwrite existing site).

I forgot to mention that it has its 'includes' directory that i would like to be deleted too... Could someone add how to also delete this dir? Includes directory is subdirectory of the same folder where install script is located.

Answer 1

You can use unlink to remove a file, and __FILE__ to get the full path to the current file :

unlink(__FILE__);

As a "proof" :

squale@shark:~/developpement/tests/temp
$ ll | grep 'remove-myself.php'
-rw-r--r-- 1 squale   squale      25 2009-08-01 17:01 remove-myself.php

=> The file exists

squale@shark:~/developpement/tests/temp
$ cat remove-myself.php
<?php

unlink(__FILE__);

=> It contains the code I gave

squale@shark:~/developpement/tests/temp
$ php ./remove-myself.php

=> I launch the script

squale@shark:~/developpement/tests/temp
$ ll | grep 'remove-myself.php'

=> It doesn't exist anymore

For this to work, you'll have to be sure you have the required privilegies... this means the user trying to delete the file needs to have right-access on the directory containing it.

When you are in command line, it's generally OK ; but if you are trying to do this via Apache, you will need to give Apache write-access to that directory/file -- Apache doesn't generally have that kind of privilege by default (not secure, and generally not needed)

Not sure it'd be possible on windows, though... It works on Linux, but Windows might kinda "lock" the file when it's being executed...

Answer 2

Try unlink. The webserver user will need write permissions for the directory/script.