The documentation also says "Be careful, if the directory contains symlinks, the function will follow them.", which is dangerous and inappropriate but thankfully not actually what removeDirectoryRecursive does (based on testing and also on reading the code). That statement should be removed from the documentation. I'm indifferent on whether the argument path itself should be able to be a symlink to a directory, and if so, whether the target directory and/or the symlink should be removed, and whether this should differ based on whether the path ends in a "/" or not. (Many Unix operations on symlinks, like `ls`, do differ based on a trailing slash. `rm -rf symlink` removes just the symlink; `rm -rf symlink/` appears to remove the contents of the target directory but neither the symlink nor the target directory itself...) -Isaac On 06/10/2014 09:42 AM, Gracjan Polak wrote:
Hi all,
A crime scene:
Prelude System.Directory> :!mkdir a-directory Prelude System.Directory> :!touch a-directory/a-file.txt Prelude System.Directory> :!ln -s "a-directory" "a-symlink-to-a-directory" Prelude System.Directory> :!ls a-directory a-file.txt Prelude System.Directory> :!ls a-symlink-to-a-directory a-file.txt Prelude System.Directory> removeDirectoryRecursive "a-symlink-to-a-directory" *** Exception: a-symlink-to-a-directory: removeDirectory: inappropriate type (Not a directory) Prelude System.Directory> :!ls a-symlink-to-a-directory Prelude System.Directory> :!ls a-directory Prelude System.Directory> :!ls -a a-directory . .. Prelude System.Directory> :!ls -a a-symlink-to-a-directory . .. Prelude System.Directory>
removeDirectoryRecursive is removing all contents *of the directory linked* but is unable to remove the symlink itself.
This behavior is surprizing if not dangerous. I understand that this mimics behavior of unlink/rmdir and DeleteFile/RemoveDirectory. but let me quote relevant manuals:
man rm: The rm utility removes symbolic links, not the files referenced by the links.
DeleteFile docs: If the path points to a symbolic link, the symbolic link is deleted, not the target. To delete a target, you must call CreateFile and specify FILE_FLAG_DELETE_ON_CLOSE.
RemoveDirectory removes a directory junction, even if the contents of the target are not empty; the function removes directory junctions regardless of the state of the target object.
Note: doesDirectoryExist and doesFileExist follow symlinks so they add more surprize to the scenario.
What can we do about this?