Can PHP 5 delete a full folder or does it require deleting all the data inside first?

When using PHP 5 to delete a full folder, you need to delete all the files and subfolders inside the folder first before deleting the folder itself. This is because PHP's rmdir() function can only delete empty folders. To delete a full folder, you need to recursively delete all the files and subfolders inside it before calling rmdir() on the parent folder. 

function deleteFolder($folder) {
    if (is_dir($folder)) {
        $files = array_diff(scandir($folder), array('.', '..'));
        foreach ($files as $file) {
            (is_dir("$folder/$file")) ? deleteFolder("$folder/$file") : unlink("$folder/$file");
        }
        rmdir($folder);
    }
}
deleteFolder('path/to/folder');

Keywords

PHP 5 delete folder delete data rmdir unlink

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