| [](https://travis-ci.org/isaacs/rimraf) [](https://david-dm.org/isaacs/rimraf) [](https://david-dm.org/isaacs/rimraf#info=devDependencies) |
| |
| The [UNIX command](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rm_(Unix)) `rm -rf` for node. |
| |
| Install with `npm install rimraf`, or just drop rimraf.js somewhere. |
| |
| ## API |
| |
| `rimraf(f, [opts], callback)` |
| |
| The first parameter will be interpreted as a globbing pattern for files. If you |
| want to disable globbing you can do so with `opts.disableGlob` (defaults to |
| `false`). This might be handy, for instance, if you have filenames that contain |
| globbing wildcard characters. |
| |
| The callback will be called with an error if there is one. Certain |
| errors are handled for you: |
| |
| * Windows: `EBUSY` and `ENOTEMPTY` - rimraf will back off a maximum of |
| `opts.maxBusyTries` times before giving up, adding 100ms of wait |
| between each attempt. The default `maxBusyTries` is 3. |
| * `ENOENT` - If the file doesn't exist, rimraf will return |
| successfully, since your desired outcome is already the case. |
| * `EMFILE` - Since `readdir` requires opening a file descriptor, it's |
| possible to hit `EMFILE` if too many file descriptors are in use. |
| In the sync case, there's nothing to be done for this. But in the |
| async case, rimraf will gradually back off with timeouts up to |
| `opts.emfileWait` ms, which defaults to 1000. |
| |
| ## options |
| |
| * unlink, chmod, stat, lstat, rmdir, readdir, |
| unlinkSync, chmodSync, statSync, lstatSync, rmdirSync, readdirSync |
| |
| In order to use a custom file system library, you can override |
| specific fs functions on the options object. |
| |
| If any of these functions are present on the options object, then |
| the supplied function will be used instead of the default fs |
| method. |
| |
| Sync methods are only relevant for `rimraf.sync()`, of course. |
| |
| For example: |
| |
| ```javascript |
| var myCustomFS = require('some-custom-fs') |
| |
| rimraf('some-thing', myCustomFS, callback) |
| ``` |
| |
| * maxBusyTries |
| |
| If an `EBUSY`, `ENOTEMPTY`, or `EPERM` error code is encountered |
| on Windows systems, then rimraf will retry with a linear backoff |
| wait of 100ms longer on each try. The default maxBusyTries is 3. |
| |
| Only relevant for async usage. |
| |
| * emfileWait |
| |
| If an `EMFILE` error is encountered, then rimraf will retry |
| repeatedly with a linear backoff of 1ms longer on each try, until |
| the timeout counter hits this max. The default limit is 1000. |
| |
| If you repeatedly encounter `EMFILE` errors, then consider using |
| [graceful-fs](http://npm.im/graceful-fs) in your program. |
| |
| Only relevant for async usage. |
| |
| * glob |
| |
| Set to `false` to disable [glob](http://npm.im/glob) pattern |
| matching. |
| |
| Set to an object to pass options to the glob module. The default |
| glob options are `{ nosort: true, silent: true }`. |
| |
| Glob version 6 is used in this module. |
| |
| Relevant for both sync and async usage. |
| |
| * disableGlob |
| |
| Set to any non-falsey value to disable globbing entirely. |
| (Equivalent to setting `glob: false`.) |
| |
| ## rimraf.sync |
| |
| It can remove stuff synchronously, too. But that's not so good. Use |
| the async API. It's better. |
| |
| ## CLI |
| |
| If installed with `npm install rimraf -g` it can be used as a global |
| command `rimraf <path> [<path> ...]` which is useful for cross platform support. |
| |
| ## mkdirp |
| |
| If you need to create a directory recursively, check out |
| [mkdirp](https://github.com/substack/node-mkdirp). |
