PowerShell remove force

Question

Trying to delete a directory recursively with rm -Force -Recurse somedirectory, I get several "The directory is not empty" errors. If I retry the same command, it succeeds.

Example:

PS I:\Documents and Settings\m\My Documents\prg\net> rm -Force -Recurse .\FileHelpers
Remove-Item : Cannot remove item I:\Documents and Settings\m\My Documents\prg\net\FileHelpers\FileHelpers.Tests\Data\RunTime\_svn: The directory is not empty.
At line:1 char:3
+ rm <<<<  -Force -Recurse .\FileHelpers
    + CategoryInfo          : WriteError: (_svn:DirectoryInfo) [Remove-Item], IOException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : RemoveFileSystemItemIOError,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.RemoveItemCommand
Remove-Item : Cannot remove item I:\Documents and Settings\m\My Documents\prg\net\FileHelpers\FileHelpers.Tests\Data\RunTime: The directory is not empty.
At line:1 char:3
+ rm <<<<  -Force -Recurse .\FileHelpers
    + CategoryInfo          : WriteError: (RunTime:DirectoryInfo) [Remove-Item], IOException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : RemoveFileSystemItemIOError,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.RemoveItemCommand
Remove-Item : Cannot remove item I:\Documents and Settings\m\My Documents\prg\net\FileHelpers\FileHelpers.Tests\Data: The directory is not empty.
At line:1 char:3
+ rm <<<<  -Force -Recurse .\FileHelpers
    + CategoryInfo          : WriteError: (Data:DirectoryInfo) [Remove-Item], IOException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : RemoveFileSystemItemIOError,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.RemoveItemCommand
Remove-Item : Cannot remove item I:\Documents and Settings\m\My Documents\prg\net\FileHelpers\FileHelpers.Tests: The directory is not empty.
At line:1 char:3
+ rm <<<<  -Force -Recurse .\FileHelpers
    + CategoryInfo          : WriteError: (FileHelpers.Tests:DirectoryInfo) [Remove-Item], IOException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : RemoveFileSystemItemIOError,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.RemoveItemCommand
Remove-Item : Cannot remove item I:\Documents and Settings\m\My Documents\prg\net\FileHelpers\Libs\nunit\_svn: The directory is not empty.
At line:1 char:3
+ rm <<<<  -Force -Recurse .\FileHelpers
    + CategoryInfo          : WriteError: (_svn:DirectoryInfo) [Remove-Item], IOException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : RemoveFileSystemItemIOError,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.RemoveItemCommand
Remove-Item : Cannot remove item I:\Documents and Settings\m\My Documents\prg\net\FileHelpers\Libs\nunit: The directory is not empty.
At line:1 char:3
+ rm <<<<  -Force -Recurse .\FileHelpers
    + CategoryInfo          : WriteError: (nunit:DirectoryInfo) [Remove-Item], IOException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : RemoveFileSystemItemIOError,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.RemoveItemCommand
Remove-Item : Cannot remove item I:\Documents and Settings\m\My Documents\prg\net\FileHelpers\Libs: The directory is not empty.
At line:1 char:3
+ rm <<<<  -Force -Recurse .\FileHelpers
    + CategoryInfo          : WriteError: (Libs:DirectoryInfo) [Remove-Item], IOException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : RemoveFileSystemItemIOError,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.RemoveItemCommand
Remove-Item : Cannot remove item I:\Documents and Settings\m\My Documents\prg\net\FileHelpers: The directory is not empty.
At line:1 char:3
+ rm <<<<  -Force -Recurse .\FileHelpers
    + CategoryInfo          : WriteError: (I:\Documents an...net\FileHelpers:DirectoryInfo) [Remove-Item], IOException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : RemoveFileSystemItemIOError,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.RemoveItemCommand
PS I:\Documents and Settings\m\My Documents\prg\net> rm -Force -Recurse .\FileHelpers
PS I:\Documents and Settings\m\My Documents\prg\net>

Of course, this doesn't happen always. Also, it doesn't happen only with _svn directories, and I don't have TortoiseSVN cache or anything like that so nothing is blocking the directory.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

help Remove-Item says:

The Recurse parameter in this cmdlet does not work properly.

and

Because the Recurse parameter in this cmdlet is faulty, the command uses the Get-Childitem cmdlet to get the desire d files, and it uses the pipeline operator to pass them to the Remove-Item cmdlet.

and proposes this alternative as an example:

get-childitem * -include *.csv -recurse | remove-item

So you should pipe get-childitem -recurse into remove-item.

Answer 2

The current answer won't actually delete a directory, just its children. Furthermore it will have problems with nested directories as it will again be trying to delete a directory before its contents. I wrote something to delete the files in the correct order, would still have the same problem though sometimes the directory would still be around afterward.

So, now I use something that will catch the exception, wait, and retry (3 times):

For now I'm using this:

function EmptyDirectory($directory = $(throw "Required parameter missing")) {

    if ((test-path $directory) -and -not (gi $directory | ? { $_.PSIsContainer })) {
        throw ("EmptyDirectory called on non-directory.");
    }

    $finished = $false;
    $attemptsLeft = 3;

    do {
        if (test-path $directory) {
            rm $directory -recurse -force
        }

        try {
            $null = mkdir $directory
            $finished = $true
        } 
        catch [System.IO.IOException] {
            Start-Sleep -Milliseconds 500
        }

        $attemptsLeft = $attemptsLeft - 1;
    } 
    while (-not $finished -and $attemptsLeft -gt 0)

    if (-not $finished) {
        throw ("Unable to clean and recreate directory " + $directory)
    }
}