⚽ Live Match: java/java program to delete a directory

The File class represents files and directories and provides methods to perform file-system operations. The delete() method can be used to delete a file or an empty directory. To delete a non-empty directory, its files and subdirectories must first be deleted. This can be done recursively by traversing the directory structure.

The delete() method can delete files and empty directories.
A non-empty directory cannot be deleted directly using delete().
Apache Commons IO providesFileUtils.deleteDirectory() for recursively deleting a directory and its contents.

Examples

Input: file = "C:\JavaFolderTest\file1.txt"
Output: File deleted successfully
Input: directory = "C:\JavaFolderTest\EmptyFolder"
Output: Directory deleted successfully
Input: directory = "C:\JavaFolderTest" containing files and subdirectories
Output: Directory and its contents deleted successfully

Suppose there exists a directory with path C:\\GFG. The following image displays the files and directories present inside GFG folder. The subdirectory Ritik contains a file named Logistics.xlsx and subdirectory Rohan contains a file named Payments.xlsx.

Methods To Delete The Directory

Java provides different approaches to delete a directory depending on whether it is empty or contains files and subdirectories.

Method 1: using delete() to delete files and empty folders

For a non-empty directory, we first need to delete all the files and subdirectories inside it. A recursive method can be used to traverse the directory and delete its contents.

Approach

Provide the path of the directory.
Create a File object for the directory.
Use listFiles() to access the files and subdirectories.
Recursively delete the contents of each subdirectory.
Delete the files and empty subdirectories using delete().
Finally, delete the main directory.

Java

import java.io.File;

class DeleteDirectory {

    // Method to recursively delete files and subdirectories
    public static void deleteDirectory(File file)
    {

        File[] files = file.listFiles();

        // Check whether the directory can be accessed
        if (files == null) {
            return;
        }

        // Traverse all files and subdirectories
        for (File subfile : files) {

            // If it is a subdirectory, recursively delete
            // its contents
            if (subfile.isDirectory()) {
                deleteDirectory(subfile);
            }

            // Delete the file or empty directory
            subfile.delete();
        }
    }

    public static void main(String[] args)
    {

        // Store the directory path
        String filepath = "C:\\GFG";
        File file = new File(filepath);

        // Check whether the directory exists
        if (!file.exists()) {
            System.out.println("Directory does not exist.");
            return;
        }

        // Delete files and subdirectories
        deleteDirectory(file);

        // Delete the main directory
        boolean deleted = file.delete();

        if (deleted) {
            System.out.println(
                "Directory deleted successfully.");
        }
        else {
            System.out.println(
                "Failed to delete the directory.");
        }
    }
}

Output

Directory deleted successfully.

Following is the image of C drive where no GFG folder is present.

Deleted File Directory — GFG folder deleted successfully

Explanation: The deleteDirectory() method traverses all files and subdirectories using listFiles(). If a subdirectory is found, the method recursively calls itself to delete its contents. After the contents are removed, the files and empty directories are deleted using delete().

Method 2: using deleteDirectory() method from commons-io

Apache Commons IO provides the FileUtils.deleteDirectory() method to delete a directory recursively. It can remove the directory along with all its files and subdirectories. To use deleteDirectory() method you need to add a commons-io dependency to maven project.

<dependency>
<groupId>commons-io</groupId>
<artifactId>commons-io</artifactId>
<version>2.5</version>
</dependency>