[](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).
