Delete directory with files in it?

I wonder, what's the easiest way to delete a directory with all its files in it?

I'm using rmdir(PATH . '/' . $value); to delete a folder, however, if there are files inside of it, I simply can't delete it.

There are at least two options available nowadays.

1. Before deleting the folder, delete all its files and folders (and this means recursion!). Here is an example:

   public static function deleteDir($dirPath) {
       if (! is_dir($dirPath)) {
           throw new InvalidArgumentException("$dirPath must be a directory");
       }
       if (substr($dirPath, strlen($dirPath) - 1, 1) != '/') {
           $dirPath .= '/';
       }
       $files = glob($dirPath . '*', GLOB_MARK);
       foreach ($files as $file) {
           if (is_dir($file)) {
               self::deleteDir($file);
           } else {
               unlink($file);
           }
       }
       rmdir($dirPath);
   }
   

2. And if you are using 5.2+ you can use a RecursiveIterator to do it without implementing the recursion yourself:

   $dir = 'samples' . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . 'sampledirtree';
   $it = new RecursiveDirectoryIterator($dir, RecursiveDirectoryIterator::SKIP_DOTS);
   $files = new RecursiveIteratorIterator($it,
                RecursiveIteratorIterator::CHILD_FIRST);
   foreach($files as $file) {
       if ($file->isDir()){
           rmdir($file->getRealPath());
       } else {
           unlink($file->getRealPath());
       }
   }
   rmdir($dir);
   

I generally use this to delete all files in a folder:

array_map('unlink', glob("$dirname/*.*"));

And then you can do

rmdir($dirname);

what's the easiest way to delete a directory with all it's files in it?

system("rm -rf ".escapeshellarg($dir));

Short function that does the job:

function deleteDir($path) {
    return is_file($path) ?
            @unlink($path) :
            array_map(__FUNCTION__, glob($path.'/*')) == @rmdir($path);
}

I use it in a Utils class like this:

class Utils {
    public static function deleteDir($path) {
        $class_func = array(__CLASS__, __FUNCTION__);
        return is_file($path) ?
                @unlink($path) :
                array_map($class_func, glob($path.'/*')) == @rmdir($path);
    }
}

With great power comes great responsibility: When you call this function with an empty value, it will delete files starting in root (/). As a safeguard you can check if path is empty:

function deleteDir($path) {
    if (empty($path)) { 
        return false;
    }
    return is_file($path) ?
            @unlink($path) :
            array_map(__FUNCTION__, glob($path.'/*')) == @rmdir($path);
}

As seen in most voted comment on PHP manual page about rmdir() (see http://php.net/manual/es/function.rmdir.php), glob() function does not return hidden files. scandir() is provided as an alternative that solves that issue.

Algorithm described there (which worked like a charm in my case) is:

<?php 
    function delTree($dir)
    { 
        $files = array_diff(scandir($dir), array('.', '..')); 

        foreach ($files as $file) { 
            (is_dir("$dir/$file")) ? delTree("$dir/$file") : unlink("$dir/$file"); 
        }

        return rmdir($dir); 
    } 
?>