How to quietly remove a directory with content in PowerShell

Remove-Item -LiteralPath "foldertodelete" -Force -Recurse

From PowerShell remove force answer: help Remove-Item says:

The Recurse parameter in this cmdlet does not work properly

The command to workaround is

Get-ChildItem -Path $Destination -Recurse | Remove-Item -force -recurse

And then delete the folder itself

Remove-Item $Destination -Force 

This worked for me:

Remove-Item $folderPath -Force  -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

Thus the folder is removed with all files in there and it is not producing error if folder path doesn't exists.

2018 Update

In the current version of PowerShell (tested with v5.1 on Windows 10 1809) one can use the simpler Unix syntax rm -R .\DirName to silently delete the directory .\DirName with all subdirectories and files it may contain. In fact many common Unix commands work in the same way in PowerShell as in a Linux command line.

One can also clean up a folder, but not the folder itself, using rm -R .\DirName\* (noted by Jeff in the comments).

in short, We can use rm -r -fo {folderName} to remove the folder recursively (remove all the files and folders inside) and force

To delete content without a folder you can use the following:

Remove-Item "foldertodelete\*" -Force -Recurse

rm -Force -Recurse -Confirm:$false $directory2Delete didn't work in the PowerShell ISE, but it worked through the regular PowerShell CLI.

I hope this helps. It was driving me bannanas.

This worked for me:

Remove-Item C:\folder_name -Force -Recurse

Powershell works with relative folders. The Remove-Item has couple of useful aliases which aligns with unix. Some examples:

rm -R -Force ./directory
del -R -Force ./directory/*

Below is a copy-pasteable implementation of Michael Freidgeim's answer

function Delete-FolderAndContents {
    # http://stackoverflow.com/a/9012108

    param(
        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true, Position=1)] [string] $folder_path
    )

    process {
        $child_items = ([array] (Get-ChildItem -Path $folder_path -Recurse -Force))
        if ($child_items) {
            $null = $child_items | Remove-Item -Force -Recurse
        }
        $null = Remove-Item $folder_path -Force
    }
}

$LogPath = "E:\" # Your local of directories
$Folders = Get-Childitem $LogPath -dir -r | Where-Object {$_.name -like "*temp*"}
foreach ($Folder in $Folders) 
{
    $Item =  $Folder.FullName
    Write-Output $Item
    Remove-Item $Item -Force -Recurse
}

Since my directory was in C:\users I had to run my powershell as administrator,

del ./[your Folder name] -Force -Recurse

this command worked for me.

If you have your folder as an object, let's say that you created it in the same script using next command:

$folder = New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force -Path "c:\tmp" -Name "myFolder"

Then you can just remove it like this in the same script

$folder.Delete($true)

$true - states for recursive removal

$LogPath = "E:\" # Your local of directories
$Folders = Get-Childitem $LogPath -dir -r | Where-Object {$_.name -like "*grav*"} # Your keyword name directories

foreach ($Folder in $Folders) 
{
    $Item =  $Folder.FullName
    Write-Output $Item
    Remove-Item $Item -Force -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
}

If you want to concatenate a variable with a fixed path and a string as the dynamic path into a whole path to remove the folder, you may need the following command:

$fixPath = "C:\Users\myUserName\Desktop"
Remove-Item ("$fixPath" + "\Folder\SubFolder") -Recurse

In the variable $newPath the concatenate path is now: "C:\Users\myUserName\Desktop\Folder\SubFolder"

So you can remove several directories from the starting point ("C:\Users\myUserName\Desktop"), which is already defined and fixed in the variable $fixPath.

$fixPath = "C:\Users\myUserName\Desktop"
Remote-Item ("$fixPath" + "\Folder\SubFolder") -Recurse
Remote-Item ("$fixPath" + "\Folder\SubFolder1") -Recurse
Remote-Item ("$fixPath" + "\Folder\SubFolder2") -Recurse

Some multi-level directory folders need to be deleted twice, which has troubled me for a long time. Here is my final code, it works for me, and cleans up nicely, hope it helps.

function ForceDelete {
    [CmdletBinding()]
    param(
        [string] $path
    )
    
    rm -r -fo $path
    
    if (Test-Path -Path $path){
        Start-Sleep -Seconds 1
        Write-Host "Force delete retrying..." -ForegroundColor white -BackgroundColor red
        rm -r -fo $path
    }
}

ForceDelete('.\your-folder-name')
ForceDelete('.\your-file-name.php')