A tiny cross-platform utility to remove items or directories recursively, it also accepts an optional glob pattern. There's also a CLI for easy, cross-platform usage. It uses 2 small dependencies tinyglobby for glob support and cli-nano for the CLI.
Inspired by rimraf and premove but also supports glob pattern to remove multiple files or directories.
npm install remove-globA remove binary is available, it takes an optional path argument (zero or multiple file/directory paths) to be removed or a --glob pattern instead of path(s).
Note
The paths and glob arguments are both optionals, but you must provide at least 1 of them.
However, please note that providing both of them simultaneously is not supported and will throw an error (choose the option that is best suited to your use case).
Usage:
remove [paths..] [options] Remove all items recursively
Arguments:
paths directory or file paths to remove [string..]
Options:
--cwd Directory to resolve from (default ".") [string]
-d, --dryRun Show which files/dirs would be deleted but without actually removing them [boolean]
-g, --glob Glob pattern(s) to find which files/dirs to remove [array]
-s, --stat Show the stats of the items being removed [boolean]
-v, --verbose If true, it will log each file or directory being removed [boolean]
-h, --help Show help [boolean]
-v, --version Show version number [boolean]
Remove files or directories. Note: on Windows globs must be double quoted, everybody else can quote however they please.
# remove "foo" and "bar" via `npx`
$ npx remove foo bar
# or remove using glob pattern(s)
$ npx remove --glob \"dist/**/*.js\"
$ npx remove --glob=\"dist/**/*.js\" --glob=\"packages/*/tsconfig.tsbuildinfo\"
# install globally, use whenever
$ npm install remove-glob -g
$ remove foo bar
$ remove --glob \"dist/**/*.{js,map}\"Note
When using the --glob option, it will skip .git/ and node_modules/ directories by default.
import { resolve } from 'node:path';
import { removeSync } from 'remove-glob';
// remove via paths
removeSync({ paths: './foobar' });
removeSync({ paths: ['./foo/file1.txt', './foo/file2.txt'] });
// or remove via glob pattern
removeSync({ glob: 'foo/**/*.txt' });
// Using `cwd` option
const dir = resolve('./foo/bar');
await removeSync({ paths: ['hello.txt'], cwd: dir });import { removeSync } from 'remove-glob';
removeSync(opt, callback);The first argument is an object holding any of the options shown below. The last argument is an optional callback function that will be executed after all files were removed.
{
cwd: string; // directory to resolve your `filepath` from, defaults to `process.cwd()`
dryRun: boolean; // show what would be copied, without actually copying anything
paths: string | string[]; // filepath(s) to remove – may be a file or a directory.
glob: string; // glob pattern to find which files/directories to remove
stats: boolean; // show some statistics after execution (time + file count)
verbose: boolean; // print more information to console when executing the removal
}Note
The first argument is required and it must include either a paths or a glob, but it cannot include both options simultaneously.
I use it in most of my own open source projects as a Dev Dependency (feel free to modify this list and add your project(s) as well)