C# Remove all empty subdirectories

Question

I have a task to clean up a large number of directories. I want to start at a directory and delete any sub-directories (no matter how deep) that contain no files (files will never be deleted, only directories). The starting directory will then be deleted if it contains no files or subdirectories. I was hoping someone could point me to some existing code for this rather than having to reinvent the wheel. I will be doing this using C#.

Answer 1

//Recursive scan of empty dirs. See example output bottom

string startDir = @"d:\root";

void Scan(string dir, bool stepBack)
    {
        //directory not empty
        if (Directory.GetFileSystemEntries(dir).Length > 0)
        {
            if (!stepBack)
            {
                foreach (string subdir in Directory.GetDirectories(dir))
                    Scan(subdir, false);
            } 
        }
        //directory empty so delete it.
        else
        {
            Directory.Delete(dir);
            string prevDir = dir.Substring(0, dir.LastIndexOf("\\"));
            if (startDir.Length <= prevDir.Length)
                Scan(prevDir, true);
        }
    }
//call like this
Scan(startDir, false);

/*EXAMPLE outputof d:\root with empty subfolders and one filled with files
   Scanning d:\root
   Scanning d:\root\folder1 (not empty)
   Scanning d:\root\folder1\folder1sub1 (not empty)
   Scanning d:\root\folder1\folder1sub1\folder2sub2 (deleted!)
   Scanning d:\root\folder1\folder1sub1 (deleted!)
   Scanning d:\root\folder1 (deleted)
   Scanning d:\root (not empty)
   Scanning d:\root\folder2 (not empty)
   Scanning d:\root\folder2\folder2sub1 (deleted)
   Scanning d:\root\folder2 (not empty)
   Scanning d:\root\folder2\notempty (not empty) */

Answer 2

If you can target the .NET 4.0 you can use the new methods on the Directory class to enumerate the directories in order to not pay a performance penalty in listing every file in a directory when you just want to know if there is at least one.

The methods are:

• Directory.EnumerateDirectories
• Directory.EnumerateFiles
• Directory.EnumerateFileSystemEntries

A possible implementation using recursion:

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    DeleteEmptyDirs("Start");
}

static void DeleteEmptyDirs(string dir)
{
    if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(dir))
        throw new ArgumentException(
            "Starting directory is a null reference or an empty string", 
            "dir");

    try
    {
        foreach (var d in Directory.EnumerateDirectories(dir))
        {
            DeleteEmptyDirs(d);
        }

        var entries = Directory.EnumerateFileSystemEntries(dir);

        if (!entries.Any())
        {
            try
            {
                Directory.Delete(dir);
            }
            catch (UnauthorizedAccessException) { }
            catch (DirectoryNotFoundException) { }
        }
    }
    catch (UnauthorizedAccessException) { }
}

You also mention that the directory tree could be very deep so it's possible you might get some exceptions if the path you are probing are too long.