Home » How to Delete a Directory in CMD

How to Delete a Directory in CMD

by

You can use the following syntax in Command Prompt (CMD) to delete a directory:

rmdir directory_name

This particular example will delete the specified directory in the current directory.

Note: Ensure that the directory you want to delete is empty, otherwise you will receive an error. If you want to delete a directory and all its contents, use the /S flag.

The following example shows how to use this syntax in practice.

Example: Deleting a Directory in CMD

Suppose that we want to delete a directory named my_app in the following path:

C:\Users\admin\Documents\cmd_script

We can type the following command to delete the directory:

rmdir C:\Users\admin\Documents\cmd_script\my_app

The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:

Delete a directory in cmd
Delete a directory in cmd

We can see that the directory my_app has been deleted from C:\Users\admin\Documents\cmd_script.

Suppose we want to delete a directory and all its contents, you can use the /S flag:

rmdir /S C:\Users\admin\Documents\cmd_script\my_app

The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:

C:\>rmdir /S C:\Users\admin\Documents\cmd_script\my_app
C:\Users\admin\Documents\cmd_script\my_app, Are you sure (Y/N)? y

C:\>cd C:\Users\admin\Documents\cmd_script\

C:\Users\admin\Documents\cmd_script>dir
 Volume in drive C is OSDisk
 Volume Serial Number is 8854-7D9F

 Directory of C:\Users\admin\Documents\cmd_script

10/06/2024  10:41 AM    <DIR>          .
10/06/2024  10:41 AM    <DIR>          ..
10/06/2024  10:27 AM    <DIR>          my_demoApp
               0 File(s)              0 bytes
               3 Dir(s)  612 909 244 416 bytes free

C:\Users\admin\Documents\cmd_script>

We can see that the directory my_app and all its contents have been deleted from C:\Users\admin\Documents\cmd_script.

Conclusion

We can use the rmdir command in cmd to delete all the contents from the specified directory.

Note: Be cautious when using the /S flag as it will delete all files and subdirectories within the specified directory.

You can find more topics about Active Directory tools and PowerShell basics on the ActiveDirectoryTools home page.