If you wanted it to delete them without prompting you:īetter yet, if we wanted to see what it would delete before taking any action:įinally, we can also remove any files that have a zero size too using the -f option: So, for example, if we wanted to remove all empty folders from c:\DataFolder, including sub folders – We would call it like this: l list what would be deleted (Will not delete) The utility is called DelEmpty.exe, a command line tool: Over a few weeks, Steve was gracious enough to work with me and develop a solution that worked well. Lots of special cases like this, and that is what makes it much more difficult than I originally thought.
This means you need to delete the deepest paths first, and work backwards. But now that they are removed, Folder2 is empty as well. It would be easy to find EmptyFolder1, and EmptyFolder2. Sent it off to Steve to try, and when he emailed me back I realized how tough of a problem this is.įor example, if you were looking to remove empty directories from this structure: In my arrogance I thought this would be such an easy task, and coded a utility in less than an hour.
Delete zero byte file in unix windows#
I am old-school, having started as a UNIX system programmer some … 40 years ago:-) So, I like elegant solutions, and in UNIX, this would be a simple one-line piped solution … unfortunately, I’ve been stuck on Windows for the past few decades…I’m wondering if you’ve ever tackled this, and, if so, if there’s anything you can share?” I have found all sorts of approaches to this, but none are elegant. “…I want to round out this junk cleaning by trashing empty directories as well.
A few months ago I received an email from Steve in Ontario: