Delete empty directories recursively - HP-UX


 
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Old 06-08-2011
Hi, methyl:

Quote:
Originally Posted by methyl
Scary piece of code. Tries to remove every directory in the tree one-by-one and ignores all errors.
I disagree. It seems quite safe to me. rmdir will not remove a directory that is not empty. It's also efficient since rmdir is called with as many arguments at a time as the system allows. Even if most of the directories are not empty and rmdir cannot remove them, any approach would have to either attempt the removal or test the directory's emptiness.


Quote:
Originally Posted by methyl
Hmm. Removes all empty directories on the first pass. Needs multiple passes to remove directories which have become empty.
Incorrect. Note that this is a depth-first traversal. If the removal of a directory creates an empty parent, this is not a problem since the parent is visited subsequently. It is a single-pass operation.

Regards,
Alister
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