RemoveDirectoryW function (fileapi.h)

Article
01/04/2024

Deletes an existing empty directory.

To perform this operation as a transacted operation, use the RemoveDirectoryTransacted function.

Syntax

BOOL RemoveDirectoryW(
  [in] LPCWSTR lpPathName
);

Parameters

[in] lpPathName

The path of the directory to be removed. This path must specify an empty directory, and the calling process must have delete access to the directory.

By default, the name is limited to MAX_PATH characters. To extend this limit to 32,767 wide characters, prepend "\\?\" to the path. For more information, see Naming Files, Paths, and Namespaces.

Tip

Starting with Windows 10, Version 1607, you can opt-in to remove the MAX_PATH limitation without prepending "\\?\". See the "Maximum Path Length Limitation" section of Naming Files, Paths, and Namespaces for details.

Return value

If the function succeeds, the return value is nonzero.

If the function fails, the return value is zero. To get extended error information, call GetLastError.

Remarks

The RemoveDirectory function marks a directory for deletion on close. Therefore, the directory is not removed until the last handle to the directory is closed.

To recursively delete the files in a directory, use the SHFileOperation function.

RemoveDirectory can be used to remove a directory junction. Since the target directory and its contents will remain accessible through its canonical path, the target directory itself is not affected by removing a junction which targets it. For this reason, when lpPathName refers to a directory junction, RemoveDirectory will remove the specified link regardless of whether the target directory is empty or not. For more information on junctions, see Hard Links and Junctions.

The use of POSIX delete causes the directory to be deleted while handles remain open. Subsequent calls to CreateDirectory to open the directory fail with ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND.

In Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012, this function is supported by the following technologies.

Technology	Supported
Server Message Block (SMB) 3.0 protocol	Yes
SMB 3.0 Transparent Failover (TFO)	Yes
SMB 3.0 with Scale-out File Shares (SO)	Yes
Cluster Shared Volume File System (CsvFS)	Yes
Resilient File System (ReFS)	Yes

Note

The fileapi.h header defines RemoveDirectory as an alias which automatically selects the ANSI or Unicode version of this function based on the definition of the UNICODE preprocessor constant. Mixing usage of the encoding-neutral alias with code that not encoding-neutral can lead to mismatches that result in compilation or runtime errors. For more information, see Conventions for Function Prototypes.

Requirements

Requirement	Value
Minimum supported client	Windows XP [desktop apps \| UWP apps]
Minimum supported server	Windows Server 2003 [desktop apps \| UWP apps]
Target Platform	Windows
Header	fileapi.h (include Windows.h)
Library	Kernel32.lib
DLL	Kernel32.dll