How to delete read-only files with Ruby commands

[Kurt Euler]

All-

On a Windows NT system, is there a way to quickly delete directories (from within a Ruby script) that may have read-only files in them. The command I've been using is

File.delete(*Dir["*.*"])

but this crashes when it hits a RO file.

Similarly, is there a way to force the overwriting of a RO file? I've been using File.syscopy, but this, too, crashes when attempting to overwrite an RO file.

Thanks!

-Kurt Euler

 

[Hal Fulton]

All-

On a Windows NT system, is there a way to quickly delete directories (from within a Ruby script) that may have read-only files in them. The command I've been using is

File.delete(*Dir["*.*"])

but this crashes when it hits a RO file.

Similarly, is there a way to force the overwriting of a RO file? I've been using File.syscopy, but this, too, crashes when attempting to overwrite an RO file.

I'd suggest this: Get a list of files first and iterate over it.
Wrap in a begin/end and catch the exception. When you get the
exception for a RO file, explicitly change it to be writable
and do a retry.

Something like:

files = Dir["*.*"]
files.each do |file|
begin
File.delete(file)
rescue Whatever
system("whatever #{file}")
retry
end
end

I don't know the exception or how to fix it in Windoze. Any other
mistakes I made are due to the lateness of the hour.

Hal

 

[Gavin Sinclair]

All-

On a Windows NT system, is there a way to quickly delete directories
(from within a Ruby script) that may have read-only files in them. The
command I've been using is

File.delete(*Dir["*.*"])

but this crashes when it hits a RO file.

Similarly, is there a way to force the overwriting of a RO file? I've
been using File.syscopy, but this, too, crashes when attempting to
overwrite an RO file.

Thanks!

-Kurt Euler

Try the standard library file 'fileutils.rb'. You can RDoc the file to
see some documentation or (of course) look at the file directly.

From memory:

require 'fileutils'

FileUtils.rm_rf(directory) # trash a directory tree
FileUtils.cp(src, dest, :force => true) # copy over a RO file

These use Unix names, but I imagine it will work on Windows.

Gavin

 

[Chris Morris]

require 'fileutils'

FileUtils.rm_rf(directory) # trash a directory tree
FileUtils.cp(src, dest, :force => true) # copy over a RO file

These use Unix names, but I imagine it will work on Windows.

Looks like it will (remove_file is ultimately called by rm_rf and
variants...)

def remove_file( fname, force = false ) #:nodoc:
first_time_p = true
begin
File.unlink fname
rescue Errno::ENOENT
raise unless force
rescue
if first_time_p
# try once more for Windows
first_time_p = false
File.chmod 0777, fname
retry
end
raise
end
end

A slightly more direct version, which I know is good for Windows, but
not verified on *nix[1]:

files.each do |file|
# make writable to allow deletion
File.chmod(0644, file)
File.delete(file)
end

[1] from http://www.clabs.org/dl/clutil/