C# Remove all empty subdirectories

Jay picture Jay · May 11, 2010 · Viewed 36.6k times · Source

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

Ragoczy picture Ragoczy · May 11, 2010

Using C# Code.

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    processDirectory(@"c:\temp");
}

private static void processDirectory(string startLocation)
{
    foreach (var directory in Directory.GetDirectories(startLocation))
    {
        processDirectory(directory);
        if (Directory.GetFiles(directory).Length == 0 && 
            Directory.GetDirectories(directory).Length == 0)
        {
            Directory.Delete(directory, false);
        }
    }
}