How to recursively delete an entire directory with PowerShell 2.0?

Question

What is the simplest way to forcefully delete a directory and all its subdirectories in PowerShell? I am using PowerShell V2 in Windows 7.

I have learned from severa

Answer 1

I took another approach inspired by @john-rees above - especially when his approach started to fail for me at some point. Basically recurse the subtree and sort files by their path-length - delete from longest to the shortest

Get-ChildItem $tfsLocalPath -Recurse |  #Find all children
    Select-Object FullName,@{Name='PathLength';Expression={($_.FullName.Length)}} |  #Calculate the length of their path
    Sort-Object PathLength -Descending | #sort by path length descending
    %{ Get-Item -LiteralPath $_.FullName } | 
    Remove-Item -Force

Regarding the -LiteralPath magic, here's another gotchya that may be hitting you: https://superuser.com/q/212808