How to stop batch script on del failure - batch-file

Question

We have a batch script that removes files (del) and directories (rd). Does anyone know how to halt (fail) execution of the script if any of these delete statements fail? They could fail if a file/directory is locked by Windows. Thanks.
Update
Statements I'm using:
Del: del *.* /S /Q
RD: FOR /D %%G in (*) DO RD /s /q %%G

Answer 1

For deleting the files, you can first try to ren (rename) the file.
ren will set ERRORLEVEL to 1 if the file is locked. Add quotes around filename.
#echo OFF
:: Delete all files, but exit if a file is locked.
for %%F in (*.*) do (
#echo Deleting %%F
ren "%%F" tmp 2> nul
if ERRORLEVEL 1 (
#echo Cannot delete %%F, it is locked.
exit /b 1
)
del tmp
)
I suspect you may be able to do the same thing for directories, but I can't seem to figure out how to get a directory locked so I can test. The following may work:
:: Remove all directories, but exit if one is locked.
FOR /D %%G in (*) DO (
#echo Removing %%G
ren "%%G" tmpdir 2> nul
if ERRORLEVEL 1 (
#echo Cannot remove %%G, it is locked
exit /b 1
)
RD /s /q tmpdir
)

Answer 2

DEL doesn't return an errorlevel if the file is locked. I just did a test with excel file and I saw a zero (on Windows XP).
It might be better to use IF EXIST for the file to be deleted after you do the delete.
del file.txt
if exist file.txt ECHO "FAIL"
AFTER EDIT
Disclaimer: I have no idea how this performs...
You could do this for the files
DIR /B /S /A-d > c:\filestodelete.txt
del *.* /S /Q
FOR /F %%i in (c:\filestodelete.txt) DO (
IF EXIST %%i ECHO %%i STILL EXISTS
)
then for the directories
DIR /B /S /Ad > c:\directoriestodelete.txt
FOR /D %%G in (*) DO RD /s /q %%G
FOR /F %%i in (c:\directoriestodelete.txt) DO (
IF EXIST %%i ECHO %%i STILL EXISTS
)

Answer 3

EDIT: Right, so del does not set the ERRORLEVEL correctly. See ERRORLEVEL on DEL and Windows delete command can fail silently
PREVIOUS (incorrect) SOLUTION
You should check the errorlevel.
For example:
del file.txt
if errorlevel 1 goto FAIL
:PASS
echo Worked!
goto :END
:FAIL
echo Failed!
exit /B 1
:END

Answer 4

Here's my preferred way to check for errors while deleting files. We redirect the "error output" (standard file "2") to a file (e.g. delCmd.err). Then we use the FOR command as a way to get access to the ~z "file size" operater. If the size of the output file is not 0, then we know that "del" got an error... we display the error with the "type" command and exit the batch file with a non-zero error code:
del unwanted.txt 2> delCmd.err
FOR /F "usebackq" %%A IN ('delCmd.err') DO set size=%%~zA
if not "%size%"=="0" (
echo Error deleting unwanted.txt
type delCmd.err
exit /B 1
)

Answer 5

Here is a shorter version of the result monitoring variant. This is using 2>&1 trick to redirect stderr to stdout and for /f to check for any output.
#echo off
setlocal
set error=0
for /f %%i in ('del notepad2.exe 2^>^&1') do set error=1
echo %error%

Answer 6

Just for your information. The DEL command does return an error code if a serious error occurs, however it's behavior is way beyond our intuition that people would simply believe that the error code doesn't work at all.
This is what I've tested in DEL command in Windows 7:
Successful deletion of all files: 0 (of course)
Some files deleted, some files missing: 0 (intuition expects 1)
Deletion failure due to no permission or a read-only medium: 0 (intuition expects ≥ 1)
Non-existent drive or drive not ready (such as no CD on a CD-ROM drive): 1 (yes, you get it, but I will expect a higher error code)
Invalid path: 1 (I will expect a higher error code, too)
And, if you specify a list of files to DEL command, where at least one of the files fit the last two kinds of error mentioned above, then none of the files in the list will be deleted at all.

Answer 7

There is a script that will work like a charm.
It tests deletion failure by testing the existence of the supposedly deleted file/directory.
The output will be an existing c:\mydirectory with completely empty content.
Any error breaks the process and is reported.
The only downside is that directories are removed recursively, because there is no simple way to start deleting directories starting with the most "sub" directories.
#echo OFF
set path_to_clean=c:\mydirectory
#echo -Deleting Files
dir /A-D /S /B %path_to_clean%\* > fileslist.txt
for /F %%F in (fileslist.txt) do (
#echo Deleting %%F
del %%F 2> nul
if exist %%F (
#echo Cannot delete %%F, it is locked.
goto errorhandling
)
)
del fileslist.txt
#echo -Deleting Files done
#echo -Deleting Directories
dir /AD /B %path_to_clean%\* > directorieslist.txt
for /F %%D in (directorieslist.txt) do (
#echo Deleting %path_to_clean%\%%D
rmdir /S /Q %path_to_clean%\%%D 2> nul
if exist %path_to_clean%\%%D (
#echo Cannot delete %path_to_clean%\%%D. This folder or one of its sub-directories is locked.
goto errorhandling
)
)
del directorieslist.txt
#echo -Deleting Directories done
:errorhandling
rem some code here

Answer 8

These seem to work for me:
RD:
FOR /D %d IN (*) DO ( RD /S /Q "%d" & IF EXIST "%d" EXIT /B 1 )
DEL:
FOR %f IN (*.*) DO ( DEL /Q "%f" & IF EXIST "%f" EXIT /B 1 )
No idea about the performance though.
You can add flag /F to DEL for a "force delete" mode.

Answer 9

For rd and rmdir you can do
rd "some directory" || rem
this will set the errorlevel correctly - see

Answer 10

Hi This should work as well
#echo off
for /f %%i in ('del notepad2.exe 2^>^&1') do set ERRORLEVEL=1
IF %ERRORLEVEL%=1 then exit