Perl

Remove a Remote Directory on an SFTP Server

Demonstrates the Chilkat SFtp.RemoveDir method, which deletes a remote directory. The only argument is the directory path.

Background: Most SFTP servers refuse to remove a directory that is not empty, so deleting a populated tree means removing its files and subdirectories first — the inverse of building a path level by level. There is no single "recursive delete" in the SFTP protocol; a client implements it by listing, descending, and removing bottom-up.

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Chilkat2 Perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use Chilkat2;

# Demonstrates the SFtp.RemoveDir method, which deletes a remote directory.  The only argument
# is the directory path.

my $sftp = Chilkat2::SFtp->new;

# Connect, authenticate, and initialize the SFTP subsystem.
my $port = 22;
my $success = $sftp->Connect('sftp.example.com', $port);
if (!$success) {
    print $sftp->LastErrorText, "\n";
    exit;
}

# Normally you would not hard-code the password in source.  You should instead obtain it
# from an interactive prompt, environment variable, or a secrets vault.
my $password = 'mySshPassword';

$success = $sftp->AuthenticatePw('mySshLogin', $password);
if (!$success) {
    print $sftp->LastErrorText, "\n";
    exit;
}

$success = $sftp->InitializeSftp();
if (!$success) {
    print $sftp->LastErrorText, "\n";
    exit;
}

# Delete a remote directory.  Most SFTP servers require the directory to be empty first.
$success = $sftp->RemoveDir('subdir/oldfolder');
if (!$success) {
    print $sftp->LastErrorText, "\n";
    exit;
}

print "Directory removed.\n";

$sftp->Disconnect();