Deleting a directory along with sub-folders

Introduction

First of all, let me tell you that this is my first contribution to CodeProject though I have been programming in C++ for more than five years now. Having said that, I think, I have good reasons to keep my first article short and simple for beginners.

Deleting a directory structure

The Windows API RemoveDirectory() function deletes an existing empty directory. If the directory is not empty, function fails with a return value zero. But most of the times, we call a function for removing a directory, what we want is to delete the directory structure completely including all files and sub-folders in it.

If you want this, there's DeleteDirectory() function to achieve it.

Source Code

BOOL DeleteDirectory(const TCHAR* sPath) {
    HANDLE hFind;  // file handle

    WIN32_FIND_DATA FindFileData;

    TCHAR DirPath[MAX_PATH];
    TCHAR FileName[MAX_PATH];

    _tcscpy(DirPath,sPath);
    _tcscat(DirPath,"\\*");    // searching all files

    _tcscpy(FileName,sPath);
    _tcscat(FileName,"\\");

    hFind = FindFirstFile(DirPath,&FindFileData); // find the first file
    if(hFind == INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE) return FALSE;
    _tcscpy(DirPath,FileName);
        
    bool bSearch = true;
    while(bSearch) { // until we finds an entry
        if(FindNextFile(hFind,&FindFileData)) {
            if(IsDots(FindFileData.cFileName)) continue;
            _tcscat(FileName,FindFileData.cFileName);
            if((FindFileData.dwFileAttributes & FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY)) {

                // we have found a directory, recurse
                if(!DeleteDirectory(FileName)) { 
                    FindClose(hFind); 
                    return FALSE; // directory couldn't be deleted
                }
                RemoveDirectory(FileName); // remove the empty directory
                _tcscpy(FileName,DirPath);
            }
            else {
                if(FindFileData.dwFileAttributes & FILE_ATTRIBUTE_READONLY)
                    _chmod(FileName, _S_IWRITE); // change read-only file mode
                if(!DeleteFile(FileName)) {  // delete the file
                    FindClose(hFind); 
                    return FALSE; 
                }                 
                _tcscpy(FileName,DirPath);
            }
        }
        else {
            if(GetLastError() == ERROR_NO_MORE_FILES) // no more files there
            bSearch = false;
            else {
                // some error occured, close the handle and return FALSE
                FindClose(hFind); 
                return FALSE;
            }

        }

    }
    FindClose(hFind);  // closing file handle
 
    return RemoveDirectory(sPath); // remove the empty directory

}

DeleteDirectory() function uses a small companion IsDot() for checking '.' and '..' directory entries.

BOOL IsDots(const TCHAR* str) {
    if(_tcscmp(str,".") && _tcscmp(str,"..")) return FALSE;
    return TRUE;
}

Explanation

DeleteDirectory() is a recursive function which navigates through a directory structure using FindFirstFile() and FindNextFile() APIs. If it finds a file, it deletes it. On the other hand, if it finds a directory entry, it just calls itself to recursively delete the directory. It returns TRUE on success and FALSE on failure.

That's all there's to it.