How to Recursively Delete Directories and Their Contents in PHP?

Recursively Deleting Directories and Their Contents in PHP

When tasked with eliminating a directory and its entire structure in PHP, a recursive approach is often sought. This involves efficiently purging not only files within the target directory but also any nested subdirectories and their contents.

Solution:

The PHP manual's user-contributed section for rmdir provides a practical implementation for this recursive deletion scenario:

function rrmdir($dir) {
    if (is_dir($dir)) {
        $objects = scandir($dir);
        foreach ($objects as $object) {
            if ($object != "." && $object != "..") {
                if (is_dir($dir . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . $object) && !is_link($dir . "/" . $object)) {
                    rrmdir($dir . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . $object);
                } else {
                    unlink($dir . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . $object);
                }
            }
        }
        rmdir($dir);
    }
}

How it Works:

1. The rrmdir() function begins by verifying if the specified $dir is a directory.
2. It then iterates through the directory's contents using scandir.

3. For each file or subdirectory encountered:

   • If it's a subdirectory (not "." or ".."), it checks if it's a genuine subdirectory (not a link) and recursively calls rrmdir() to delete its contents.
   • Otherwise, it directly deletes the file.
4. Finally, once all contents have been removed, the original directory ($dir) is deleted.

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