Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!wpg!tulane!mb
From: mb@tulane.tulane.edu (Mark Benard)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: recursive deletion
Message-ID: <40@tulane.tulane.edu>
Date: 5 Mar 88 11:47:04 GMT
References: <567004@mail.uwa.oz> <2202@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Reply-To: mb@tulane.UUCP (Mark Benard)
Organization: C.S. Dept., Tulane Univ., New Orleans, LA
Lines: 28

In article <2202@bsu-cs.UUCP> cfchiesa@bsu-cs.UUCP (Sir Xetwnk) writes:
>In article <567004@mail.uwa.oz>, j_smartt@mail.uwa.oz writes:
>>
>>      does anybody have a VMS/DCL procedure to simulate the UNIX
>> "rm -r *.*" command - i.e. to recursively remove all files at and below
>> a given directory?
>>
>   You should be able to do that in DCL with the following commands:
>
>$ DELETE [...]*.*;*              ! May not delete non-empty .DIRs on frst pass,
>                                   but then again maybe it will.
>
To fully delete a directory DISK:[SMITH] (aka DISK:[000000]SMITH.DIR)
takes 3 commands

$ DELETE DISK:[SMITH...*]*.*.*      ! to get contents of subdirectories
$ DELETE DISK:[SMITH]*.*.*          ! to get contents of main directory
$ DELETE DISK:[000000]SMITH.DIR

which can be put in a command file as long as you do not branch on
warnings which will be generated by the first command if there are no
subdirectories.
-- 
Mark Benard
Department of Computer Science     INTERNET:   mb@TULANE.EDU
Tulane University                  USENET:     pyramid!tulane!mb
New Orleans, LA 70118              BITNET:     mb%TULANE.EDU@RELAY.CS.NET
				    (or pyramid!tulane!mb at DECWRL.DEC.COM)