Command line tool to delete folder with a specified name recursively in Windows?

Question

I want to delete every "_svn" in every folder and subfolder...

For example

c:\
  proyect1
   _svn
   images
     _svn
     banner
       _svn
     buttons
       _svn

Then I run something like

rm-recurse c:\proyect1 _svn

And I should get:

c:\
  proyect1
   images
     banner
     buttons

The ideal thing would be a tiny stand-alone EXE or something like that.

-- Thanks Grant, as soon as I posted the question I saw SVN documentation about the SVN export command, but I also want to delete the _vti_* folders stuff Visual Studio creates, so I'll also explore the for solution.

Please reword this in the form of a question; are you asking for help in developing a tool to do this, or do you wish to know if any such tools are available? — Rob, Feb 06 '09 at 17:53
.bat files don't solve all Windows problems. Sometimes you have to fill them with commands and stuff first. — Grant, Feb 06 '09 at 17:57

score 150 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 06 '09 at 18:05

150

Similar to BlackTigerX's "for", I was going to suggest

for /d /r . %d in (_svn) do @if exist "%d" rd /s/q "%d"

answered Feb 06 '09 at 18:05

JMD

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Yes, because the nature of this "for" is that it adds "_svn" to every directory entry as it recurses the directory tree. – JMD Feb 06 '09 at 18:18
Your solution bypasses that by returning an explicit list of the existing directories. – JMD Feb 06 '09 at 18:19
1

Though this is older than 2 years old, you taught me something new! Thanks. – Ryan Ternier Oct 27 '11 at 18:32
@JMD If I wanted to target D:\Projects\ from a BAT FILE, how would you place a specific dir path into this command? – Ravi Ram Dec 13 '13 at 14:17
5

@DavidKEgghead, just replace the '.' (current directory) with the directory you want to search. Be sure to wrap it in quotes if your target contains spaces. Thus, you would use: `for /d /r "D:\Projects" %d in (_svn) do @if exist "%d" rd /s/q "%d"` I often test these by replacing the actual 'work' with an echo first: `for /d /r "D:\Projects" %d in (_svn) do @if exist "%d" echo "%d"` so that I can see what things I'm going to affect. – JMD Dec 13 '13 at 17:30
3

When I run this recursively sometimes I get "the-directory-is-not-empty" Why so? What might the reason behind that? – SabareeshSS Aug 20 '15 at 11:14
7

If you want to save this to a bat file, don't forget to replace % by %%. – Jesper Mygind Nov 04 '16 at 07:50
1

@JMD +1 for the answer. A good use case is recursive deletion of `__MACOSX` directories and `.DS_Store` files, if you have copied files from Mac OS to Windows OS. Save following lines to `del.bat` file and double click to run it. `del /f /s .DS_Store for /d /r . %%d in (__MACOSX) do (@if exist "%%d" rd /s /q "%%d")` – Hamza Rashid Mar 27 '18 at 11:13
what if the specific folder name contains space, for example `My Folder` instead of `_svn`? i tried escaping it within quotation marks but it dosen't work! – S.Serpooshan Jul 15 '23 at 06:59

score 41 · Answer 2 · edited Nov 13 '09 at 09:03

41

Time to learn some PowerShell ;o)

Get-ChildItem -path c:\projet -Include '_svn' -Recurse -force | Remove-Item -force -Recurse

The first part finds each _svn folder recursively. Force is used to find hidden folders. Second part is used to delete these folders and their contents. Remove commandlet comes with a handy "whatif" parameter which allows to preview what will be done.

PowerShell is available for Windows XP and Windows Vista. It is present on Windows 7 and on Windows Server 2008 R2 by default.

It's a MS product, it's free, and it rocks!

edited Nov 13 '09 at 09:03

Peter Mortensen

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answered Nov 13 '09 at 07:23

Cédric Rup

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This solution works perfectly on windows server 2008 R2. Thank you – STT LCU Dec 11 '13 at 14:19
1

Does anyone know the syntax for the "whatif" parameter to preview what will be done? – alias51 Sep 10 '19 at 12:13
1

Just add "-whatif" at the end of the line. It's an option of the Remove-Item Cmdlet – Cédric Rup Sep 11 '19 at 09:46

score 26 · Answer 3 · edited Jul 29 '11 at 16:32

26

For inclusion/invocation from within a BATCH file use (say for removing Debug and Release folder):

for /d /r . %%d in (Debug Release) do @if exist "%%d" echo "%%d" && rd /s/q "%%d"

double % are required within a batch file to work as escape chars. Else it reports error of syntax.

Thanks.

edited Jul 29 '11 at 16:32

Adriano Carneiro

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answered Jul 29 '11 at 05:44

Rajesh Gautam PhD

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score 15 · Answer 4 · edited Jul 29 '11 at 16:32

15

for /f "usebackq" %d in (`"dir _svn /ad/b/s"`) do rd /s/q "%d"

http://ebersys.blogspot.com/2008/07/recursively-delete-svn-folders-easy-way.html

edited Jul 29 '11 at 16:32

Adriano Carneiro

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answered Feb 06 '09 at 17:55

BlackTigerX

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I get an error: couldn't find dir file, I tried with cmd.exe /c dir ..., but i get the same error, however, JMD's solution dis the trick... – opensas Feb 06 '09 at 20:28
Oops, I checked the page you linked to, seems like there where a couple of ´´ (single quotes) missing... fixing that also did the trick... – opensas Feb 06 '09 at 20:32

score 10 · Answer 5 · answered Feb 06 '09 at 17:55

10

In Windows? If you are using tortoiseSVN you can use the export command to export a copy of the project without the .svn/_svn folders.

answered Feb 06 '09 at 17:55

Grant

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You can also do svn export with the command line tool whether you are on Windows or not. – Parappa Feb 06 '09 at 18:11
I think the reason people end up needing to recursively delete the .svn/_svn folders is because they've directly copied their local working copy to a new location in order to do a folder comparison of their modified version compared to a clean export, i.e. after something goes awry with the modified local working copy. (At least that's why I've needed it. It's definitely easier/faster to just use 'svn export' when that's possible.) – JMD Mar 29 '12 at 17:44

score 4 · Answer 6 · edited Nov 13 '09 at 09:29

import os
import shutil

curdir = os.path.abspath(os.path.dirname(__file__))

def removedir(dirname, name = ".svn"):
    if os.path.isdir(dirname):
        for file in os.listdir(dirname):
            if os.path.isdir(os.path.join(dirname, file)) and file == name:
                thedir = os.path.join(dirname, name)
                shutil.rmtree(thedir)
                print ".",
            else:
                removedir(os.path.join(dirname, file))

I think you can try this Python script, which will work under any OS if you've got Python installed.

score 3 · Answer 7 · answered Mar 13 '09 at 16:23

3

Here... with FreeCommander or TotalCommander

http://www.broobles.com/blog/posts/36

socendani

answered Mar 13 '09 at 16:23

1

As a long time TotalCommander (formerly Windows Commander!) user, I can't let this answer stay negative. This is a great, simple solution for someone who already has TC installed. I'm glad to have learned this nifty trick. Thanks! – Adam Tuttle Jan 13 '10 at 20:25
1

The most straight forward solution here! – Amio.io Jul 16 '14 at 09:11

score 3 · Answer 8 · answered Oct 25 '11 at 20:21

3

Another option from SVN Forum: use XCopy with a file that contains the list of files/directories to be excluded (.svn or _svn in this case)

XCopy C:\VersionedFolder C:\UnVersionedFolder /EXCLUDE:C:\No.SVN.txt /E /C /I /F /R /Y

answered Oct 25 '11 at 20:21

Teorist

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Or `ROBOCOPY`, which doesn't require a list file. – kayleeFrye_onDeck Jul 13 '16 at 21:36

Command line tool to delete folder with a specified name recursively in Windows?

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