Scan and Delete empty folders

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

It is a very simple Windows shell script which will remove empty folders (directories) from filesystem.

Surprisingly, I have not found any inbuilt command under Windows to clean up file systems by removing unneeded empty directories. I often have such empty folders after restructuring a project archive. Although they don't take up much space, they are untidy and give spurious hits in searches. Also one become freaky when you see a empty folder without any contents after travling around 7 folders deep. So I wrote this script.

How to use RemoveEmptyFolders.bat script (Bit manual, but works!)
  • Copy the script in folder, which empty sub-folders should be deleted. Run the script. Script will create a bat file named 'EMPTIES.BAT' which will containes list of sub-folders.
  • Now open any text editor (I use Editplus) and add prefix RM (Delete command) before each line.
  • Note that If your path contains any spaces then put the path in (") double inverted comma.
Sample edited EMPTIES.BAT file
RD "C:\Documents and Settings\Sandesh\trophies"
RD "C:\Documents and Settings\Sandesh\trophies\XYZ"
RD "C:\Documents and Settings\Sandesh\trophies\ABC"

Download RemoveEmptyFolders.bat [Disclaimer: This is a freeware script, Use it at your own risk. Author will not responsible for any loses due to using this RemoveEmptyFolders.bat script.]

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Posted by Sandesh Email this!

5 Comments on 'Scan and Delete empty folders':

Thank you for your script. I've used it.

More utility script based on yours
for /F %%i IN ('"DIR /AD/B/S | SORT /R"') DO rmdir /q %%i


/Alexander

By Anonymous Anonymous, at 4:39 pm, April 14, 2008  

A little update to account for directories with spaces. Thanks!

for /F "tokens=*" %%i IN ('"DIR /AD/B/S | SORT /R"') DO rmdir /q "%%i"

By Anonymous Anonymous, at 7:30 pm, September 02, 2008  

A little update to account for directories with spaces. Thanks!

for /F "tokens=*" %%i IN ('"DIR /AD/B/S | SORT /R"') DO rmdir /q "%%i"

By Anonymous Anonymous, at 7:33 pm, September 02, 2008  

Thanks Alexander & Sedie

By Blogger Sandesh, at 7:42 pm, September 02, 2008  

is there a way to ignore some folders while deleting? I want to ignore the .svn directories during this process.

By Blogger Nikhil, at 12:17 pm, February 11, 2009  

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