I am a danish programmer living in Bangkok.
Read more about me @ rasmus.rummel.dk.

ClearFolder

.Net Framework does not have a function that can delete all contents of a folder, eg. if you try DirectoryInfo.Delete(true); and the hierachy have any content, then it will fail with "Directory is not empty". This means we have to write a recursive delete function each time we want to clear a directory hierarchy.

References :

How to delete all files and folders in a directory - very good discussion and I took the best to create the ClearFolder function below.

Usage

Example
- I use the ClearFolder function on menulab.com to delete orphaned Compact Edition database files that are left overs of the Discussions server control examples.

Example Code

string sessionsPath = Server.MapPath("~/_menulab/Discussions/Sessions");
if (System.IO.Directory.Exists(sessionsPath))
{
	ClearFolder(sessionsPath);
}

The ClearFolder function :

public static void ClearFolder(string pFolderPath)
{
	DirectoryInfo dirInfo = new DirectoryInfo(pFolderPath);

	FileInfo[] fileInfos = dirInfo.GetFiles();
	foreach (FileInfo fileInfo in fileInfos)
	{
		if (!fileInfo.IsReadOnly)
		{
			fileInfo.Delete();
		}
	}

	DirectoryInfo[] subDirInfos = dirInfo.GetDirectories();
	foreach (DirectoryInfo subDirInfo in subDirInfos)
	{
		ClearFolder(subDirInfo.FullName);
		subDirInfo.Delete();
	}
}