Question

C# wildcard file or directory delete? using System.IO.File.Delete

Asked by: Karl66

C# VS 2008 Windows App - Trying to do a wildcard delete of numerous files or directories.

                System.IO.File.Delete(@"c:\wtemp2\*.*");
                System.IO.Directory.Delete(@"c:\wtemp2\*");

Neithier of these work - report invalid chacter? Is there a way around this (easy way)?

Karl66

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Asked On
2008-03-25 at 14:36:54ID23268739
Topics

C# Programming Language

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Programming Languages

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Answers

 

by: angelIIIPosted on 2008-03-25 at 14:41:30ID: 21206547

you cannot delete with "wild character".
you have to list the files and delete one by one
OR
run a command line to run "DEL c:\wtemp2\*.*"

 

by: Karl66Posted on 2008-03-25 at 14:42:57ID: 21206557

Have an example?

 

by: jlach01Posted on 2008-03-25 at 14:48:22ID: 21206605

Hi,

There are a couple solutions you could use here. If you want to delete all files in the folder, and the folder included, you could use System.IO.Directory.Delete("C:\\My\\Folder", true). The true is there to tell the system to do a recursive delete, which will delete all files and sub directory in that folder, and then delete that folder.

If you want to delete only the files in the directory, but keep the directory, you could do this:

string[] files = System.IO.Directory.GetFiles("C:\\My\\Folder");
foreach ( string file in files ) {
     System.IO.File.Delete(file);
}

 

by: angelIIIPosted on 2008-03-25 at 14:48:42ID: 21206611

sure:

 DirectoryInfo di = new DirectoryInfo("c:\wtemp2");
 FileInfo[] rgFiles = di.GetFiles("*.*");
 foreach(FileInfo fi in rgFiles)
 {
   fi.Delete();
 }

                                              
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by: dsandrsnPosted on 2008-04-03 at 21:08:41ID: 21279021

Anyone interested in a wild card delete of all files of the same extension in a directory read on. This example deletes all *.doc files in the application path but can be tailored to do the same for any path.

C#

                      // Finds folder path of current assembly,  
TargetPath = System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location;
                        TargetPath = TargetPath.Substring(0, TargetPath.LastIndexOf("\\") + 1);
                        // Deletes all *.doc files in dir
                        string[] fileEntries = Directory.GetFiles(@TargetPath, "*.doc");
                        foreach (string fileName in fileEntries)
                        {
                            File.Delete(fileName);
                        }

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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