How to delete a folder in C++?

Question

How can I delete a folder using C++?

If no cross-platform way exists, then how to do it for the most-popular OSes - Windows, Linux, Mac, iOS, Android? Would a POSIX

Answer 1

void remove_dir(char *path)
{
        struct dirent *entry = NULL;
        DIR *dir = NULL;
        dir = opendir(path);
        while(entry = readdir(dir))
        {   
                DIR *sub_dir = NULL;
                FILE *file = NULL;
                char abs_path[100] = {0};
                if(*(entry->d_name) != '.')
                {   
                        sprintf(abs_path, "%s/%s", path, entry->d_name);
                        if(sub_dir = opendir(abs_path))
                        {   
                                closedir(sub_dir);
                                remove_dir(abs_path);
                        }   
                        else 
                        {   
                                if(file = fopen(abs_path, "r"))
                                {   
                                        fclose(file);
                                        remove(abs_path);
                                }   
                        }   
                }   
        }   
        remove(path);
}

Answer 2

//For windows:

#include <direct.h>


if(_rmdir("FILEPATHHERE") != -1)
{
  //success     
} else {
  //failure
}

Answer 3

With C++17 you can use std::filesystem, in C++14 std::experimental::filesystem is already available. Both allow the usage of filesystem::remove().

C++17:

#include <filesystem>
std::filesystem::remove("myEmptyDirectoryOrFile"); // Deletes empty directories or single files.
std::filesystem::remove_all("myDirectory"); // Deletes one or more files recursively.

C++14:

#include <experimental/filesystem>
std::experimental::filesystem::remove("myDirectory");

Note 1: Those functions throw filesystem_error in case of errors. If you want to avoid catching exceptions, use the overloaded variants with std::error_code as second parameter. E.g.

std::error_code errorCode;
if (!std::filesystem::remove("myEmptyDirectoryOrFile", errorCode)) {
    std::cout << errorCode.message() << std::endl;
}

Note 2: The conversion to std::filesystem::path happens implicit from different encodings, so you can pass strings to filesystem::remove().

Answer 4

The directory should be empty.

BOOL RemoveDirectory( LPCTSTR lpPathName );