Delete files or folder recursively on Windows CMD

Question

How do I delete files or folders recursively on Windows from the command line?

I have found this solution where path we drive on the command line and run this comman

Answer 1

Use the Windows rmdir command

That is, rmdir /S /Q C:\Temp

I'm also using the ones below for some years now, flawlessly.

Check out other options with: forfiles /?

Delete SQM/Telemetry in windows folder recursively

forfiles /p %SYSTEMROOT%\system32\LogFiles /s /m *.* /d -1 /c "cmd /c del @file"

Delete windows TMP files recursively

forfiles /p %SYSTEMROOT%\Temp /s /m *.* /d -1 /c "cmd /c del @file"

Delete user TEMP files and folders recursively

forfiles /p %TMP% /s /m *.* /d -1 /c "cmd /c del @file"

Answer 2

You could also do:

del /s /p *.{your extension here}

The /p will prompt you for each found file, if you're nervous about deleting something you shouldn't.

Answer 3

The other answers didn't work for me, but this did:

del /s /q *.svn
rmdir /s /q *.svn

/q disables Yes/No prompting

/s means delete the file(s) from all subdirectories.

Answer 4

For file deletion, I wrote following simple batch file which deleted all .pdf's recursively:

del /s /q "\\ad1pfrtg001\AppDev\ResultLogs\*.pdf"
del /s /q "\\ad1pfrtg001\Project\AppData\*.pdf"

Even for the local directory we can use it as:

del /s /q "C:\Project\*.pdf"

The same can be applied for directory deletion where we just need to change del with rmdir.

Answer 5

For hidden files I had to use the following:

DEL /S /Q /A:H Thumbs.db

Answer 6

You can use this in the bat script:

rd /s /q "c:\folder a"

Now, just change c:\folder a to your folder's location. Quotation is only needed when your folder name contains spaces.