[comp.lang.pascal] Deleting files in MS-DOS

cs40sc30@CSUFRES.CSUFRESNO.EDU (Mika Toikka) (08/16/89)

How does one delete files or directories in MS-DOS from Pascal, if this
is possible? I am trying to write a program that does something like the
'rm -rf *' (recursively delete all contents of directory) of Unix. I'm
pretty sure that the MS-DOS batch-file language is unsuited to this task,
so I'm trying to use Pascal. Please e-mail me. I'll summarize to the net
if there's interest.
 


David Choweller    InterNet: davec@csufres.csufresno.edu
                   UUCP: davec@csuf3b.UUCP

mg2n+@andrew.cmu.edu (Martin G. Greenberg) (08/17/89)

If you're using Turbo Pascal, it's relatively easy to erase a given file:
The code below will erase the file named "demo.foo" provided the file is
not read only.

PROCEDURE Demo;
VAR
    File2Kill : Text;  (* Declaring as text will allow any file to be erased *)

BEGIN
    Assign (File2Kill, 'DEMO.FOO');
    Erase (File2Kill)
END;

As to erasing an entire directory and/or subdirectories, you could use
Turbo's "FileFind" procedure/function and a while loop to erase the
whole directory.

Hope this helps.

                                              MGG