How to delete empty folders using windows command

Question

I need to delete all empty folders from my application folder using windows command prompt?

How can I create a bat file like that?

Please help me.

Answer 1

from the command line: for /R /D %1 in (*) do rd "%1"

in a batch file for /R /D %%1 in (*) do rd "%%1"

I don't know if it's documented as such, but it works in W2K, XP, and Win 7. And I don't know if it will always work, but it won't ever delete files by accident.

Answer 2

Adding to corroded answer from the same referenced page is a PowerShell version http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2008/04/17/8399914.aspx#8408736

Get-ChildItem -Recurse . | where { $_.PSISContainer -and @( $_ | Get-ChildItem ).Count -eq 0 } | Remove-Item

or, more tersely,

gci -R . | where { $_.PSISContainer -and @( $_ | gci ).Count -eq 0 } | ri

credit goes to the posting author

Answer 3

You can use ROBOCOPY. It is very simple and can also be used to delete empty folders inside large hierarchy.

ROBOCOPY folder1 folder1 /S /MOVE

Here both source and destination are folder1, as you only need to delete empty folders, instead of moving other(required) files to different folder. /S option is to skip copying(moving - in the above case) empty folders. It is also faster as the files are moved inside the same drive.

Answer 4

Install any UNIX interpreter for windows (Cygwin or Git Bash) and run the cmd:

find /path/to/directory -empty -type d

To find them

find /path/to/directory -empty -type d -delete

To delete them

(not really using the windows cmd prompt but it's easy and took few seconds to run)

Answer 5

This is a hybird of the above. It removes ALL files older than X days and removes any empty folders for the given path. To use simply set the days, folderpath and drive

@echo off
SETLOCAL
set days=30
set folderpath=E:\TEST\
set drive=E:

::Delete files
forfiles -p %folderpath% -s -d -%days% -c "cmd /c del /q @path "

::Delete folders
cd %folderpath%
%drive%
for /f "usebackq delims=" %%d in (`"dir /ad/b/s | sort /R"`) do rd "%%d"`