Gudubeth

The function below deletes directories with many options. You can delete directories recursively, delete only content of directories or remove files in a directory with regular expression. I wrote details in PHPDoc format.

/**
 * removes files in a directory
 * examples:
 * <pre>
 * removeDir('/home/gudubeth/pics');
 *      //delete everything and the directory itself.
 * removeDir('/home/gudubeth/pics', false);
 *      //delete only content of the directory. subdirectories are deleted too.
 * removeDir('/home/gudubeth/pics', false, false);
 *      //delete only content of the directory. subdirectories
 *      //are NOT deleted
 * removeDir('/home/gudubeth/pics', false, true, '/.*\.jpg/');
 *      //delete only jpg files inside this directory and its sub directories.
 * </pre>
 * @param str $dir  directory path
 * @param bool $deleteDir   deletes the directory itself if it is true.
 *                          default is true
 * @param bool $recursive   deletes files recursively if it is true.
 *                          default is true
 * @param str $regEx        deletes files only if they match this $regEx.
 *                          Regular expression checking is done with preg_match.
 *                          default is '/.*/' which means 'everything'
 * @return  bool    true if every file is deleted successfully or there are
 *                  no files found to delete. false if any of the deletions
 *                  is unsuccessful
 *
 * */
function removeDir($dir, $deleteDir=true, $recursive=true, $regEx="/.*/") {
    if(!$dh = @opendir($dir)) return false;
    $result=true;
    while (($file=readdir($dh))!==false) {
        if($file!='.' && $file!='..'){
            if(is_dir( $dir.'/'.$file) && $recursive)
                $result = removeDir($dir.'/'.$file, true, true, $regEx) && $result;
            else if(preg_match($regEx, $file))
                $result = @unlink($dir.'/'.$file) && $result;
        }
    }
    closedir($dh);
    if($deleteDir) $result = @rmdir($dir) && $result;
    return $result;
}