| 1 | [](https://travis-ci.org/isaacs/rimraf) [](https://david-dm.org/isaacs/rimraf) [](https://david-dm.org/isaacs/rimraf#info=devDependencies)
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| 2 |
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| 3 | The [UNIX command](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rm_(Unix)) `rm -rf` for node.
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| 4 |
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| 5 | Install with `npm install rimraf`, or just drop rimraf.js somewhere.
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| 6 |
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| 7 | ## API
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| 8 |
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| 9 | `rimraf(f, [opts], callback)`
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| 10 |
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| 11 | The first parameter will be interpreted as a globbing pattern for files. If you
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| 12 | want to disable globbing you can do so with `opts.disableGlob` (defaults to
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| 13 | `false`). This might be handy, for instance, if you have filenames that contain
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| 14 | globbing wildcard characters.
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| 15 |
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| 16 | The callback will be called with an error if there is one. Certain
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| 17 | errors are handled for you:
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| 18 |
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| 19 | * Windows: `EBUSY` and `ENOTEMPTY` - rimraf will back off a maximum of
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| 20 | `opts.maxBusyTries` times before giving up, adding 100ms of wait
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| 21 | between each attempt. The default `maxBusyTries` is 3.
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| 22 | * `ENOENT` - If the file doesn't exist, rimraf will return
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| 23 | successfully, since your desired outcome is already the case.
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| 24 | * `EMFILE` - Since `readdir` requires opening a file descriptor, it's
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| 25 | possible to hit `EMFILE` if too many file descriptors are in use.
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| 26 | In the sync case, there's nothing to be done for this. But in the
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| 27 | async case, rimraf will gradually back off with timeouts up to
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| 28 | `opts.emfileWait` ms, which defaults to 1000.
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| 29 |
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| 30 | ## options
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| 31 |
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| 32 | * unlink, chmod, stat, lstat, rmdir, readdir,
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| 33 | unlinkSync, chmodSync, statSync, lstatSync, rmdirSync, readdirSync
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| 34 |
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| 35 | In order to use a custom file system library, you can override
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| 36 | specific fs functions on the options object.
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| 37 |
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| 38 | If any of these functions are present on the options object, then
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| 39 | the supplied function will be used instead of the default fs
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| 40 | method.
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| 41 |
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| 42 | Sync methods are only relevant for `rimraf.sync()`, of course.
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| 43 |
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| 44 | For example:
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| 45 |
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| 46 | ```javascript
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| 47 | var myCustomFS = require('some-custom-fs')
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| 48 |
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| 49 | rimraf('some-thing', myCustomFS, callback)
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| 50 | ```
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| 51 |
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| 52 | * maxBusyTries
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| 53 |
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| 54 | If an `EBUSY`, `ENOTEMPTY`, or `EPERM` error code is encountered
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| 55 | on Windows systems, then rimraf will retry with a linear backoff
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| 56 | wait of 100ms longer on each try. The default maxBusyTries is 3.
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| 57 |
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| 58 | Only relevant for async usage.
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| 59 |
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| 60 | * emfileWait
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| 61 |
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| 62 | If an `EMFILE` error is encountered, then rimraf will retry
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| 63 | repeatedly with a linear backoff of 1ms longer on each try, until
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| 64 | the timeout counter hits this max. The default limit is 1000.
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| 65 |
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| 66 | If you repeatedly encounter `EMFILE` errors, then consider using
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| 67 | [graceful-fs](http://npm.im/graceful-fs) in your program.
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| 68 |
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| 69 | Only relevant for async usage.
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| 70 |
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| 71 | * glob
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| 72 |
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| 73 | Set to `false` to disable [glob](http://npm.im/glob) pattern
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| 74 | matching.
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| 75 |
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| 76 | Set to an object to pass options to the glob module. The default
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| 77 | glob options are `{ nosort: true, silent: true }`.
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| 78 |
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| 79 | Glob version 6 is used in this module.
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| 80 |
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| 81 | Relevant for both sync and async usage.
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| 82 |
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| 83 | * disableGlob
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| 84 |
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| 85 | Set to any non-falsey value to disable globbing entirely.
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| 86 | (Equivalent to setting `glob: false`.)
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| 87 |
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| 88 | ## rimraf.sync
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| 89 |
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| 90 | It can remove stuff synchronously, too. But that's not so good. Use
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| 91 | the async API. It's better.
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| 92 |
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| 93 | ## CLI
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| 94 |
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| 95 | If installed with `npm install rimraf -g` it can be used as a global
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| 96 | command `rimraf <path> [<path> ...]` which is useful for cross platform support.
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| 97 |
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| 98 | ## mkdirp
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| 99 |
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| 100 | If you need to create a directory recursively, check out
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| 101 | [mkdirp](https://github.com/substack/node-mkdirp).
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