How do I recursively delete a directory and its entire contents (files + sub dirs) in PHP?

The user-contributed section in the manual page of rmdir contains a decent implementation:

 function rrmdir($dir) { 
   if (is_dir($dir)) { 
     $objects = scandir($dir);
     foreach ($objects as $object) { 
       if ($object != "." && $object != "..") { 
         if (is_dir($dir. DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR .$object) && !is_link($dir."/".$object))
           rrmdir($dir. DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR .$object);
         else
           unlink($dir. DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR .$object); 
       } 
     }
     rmdir($dir); 
   } 
 }

Building on The Pixel Developer's comment, a snippet using the SPL might look like:

$files = new RecursiveIteratorIterator(
    new RecursiveDirectoryIterator($dir, RecursiveDirectoryIterator::SKIP_DOTS),
    RecursiveIteratorIterator::CHILD_FIRST
);

foreach ($files as $fileinfo) {
    $todo = ($fileinfo->isDir() ? 'rmdir' : 'unlink');
    $todo($fileinfo->getRealPath());
}

rmdir($dir);

Note: It does no sanity checking and makes use of the SKIP_DOTS flag introduced with the FilesystemIterator in PHP 5.3.0. Of course, the $todo could be an if/else. The important point is that CHILD_FIRST is used to iterate over the children (files) first before their parent (folders).


Deletes all files and folders in the path.

function recurseRmdir($dir) {
  $files = array_diff(scandir($dir), array('.','..'));
  foreach ($files as $file) {
    (is_dir("$dir/$file")) ? recurseRmdir("$dir/$file") : unlink("$dir/$file");
  }
  return rmdir($dir);
}