Why can't just simply delete the directory?

[Jay Glanville <di...@nortelnetworks.com>]

I'm currently using a nightly build for Oct 11 2000.

I have a clean task that does something like the following:
  <target name="clean"  >
    <delete dir="${build.loc}" />
  </target>

The task performs beautifully, but not efficiently.  Before it deletes the
directory, it deletes all the files within it.  However, when my
${build.loc} contains over 4000 files, this deleting of files can take a
while. (true, only a little over 60 seconds)  Why can't it simply delete the
directory itself?


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Jay Dickon Glanville
P068 - SiteManager Development, Nortel Networks
613-765-1144 (ESN 395-1144)
MS: 045/55/A05
E-Mail: dickon@nortelnetworks.com

Re: Why can't just simply delete the directory?

[Stefan Bodewig <bo...@apache.org>]

Jay Glanville <di...@nortelnetworks.com> wrote:

> The task performs beautifully, but not efficiently.  Before it
> deletes the directory, it deletes all the files within it.

File.delete will not delete a directory unless it's empty, sorry.

Stefan

Re: Why can't just simply delete the directory?

[James Duncan Davidson <du...@x180.net>]

On 12/7/00 2:50 PM, "Jay Glanville" <di...@nortelnetworks.com> wrote:

> The task performs beautifully, but not efficiently.  Before it deletes the
> directory, it deletes all the files within it.  However, when my
> ${build.loc} contains over 4000 files, this deleting of files can take a
> while. (true, only a little over 60 seconds)  Why can't it simply delete the
> directory itself?

When I was first writing ant -- I tried to just file.delete(); and was
disappointed that it didn't work. However, the Javadoc for the method
specifies:

"Deletes the file or directory denoted by this abstract pathname. If this
pathname denotes a directory, then the directory must be empty in order to
be deleted."

There's no equivalent to 'rm -rf' in the java.io.File class -- so chasing
the tree down and nuking all files, then all directories, back to the parent
is the only way to do it.

.duncan

-- 
James Duncan Davidson                                        duncan@x180.net
                                                                  !try; do()