[ACCEPTED]-Waiting for system to delete file-delete-file

This works for me:

public static void DeleteFile(String fileToDelete)
{
    var fi = new System.IO.FileInfo(fileToDelete);
    if (fi.Exists)
    {
        fi.Delete();
        fi.Refresh();
        while (fi.Exists)
        {    System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(100);
             fi.Refresh();
        }
    }
}

I find that most of the 1 time, the while loop will not be entered.

Lightweight code to use a FileSystemWatcher, subscribe to 1 its Deleted event and wait.

void DeleteFileAndWait(string filepath, int timeout = 30000)
{
    using (var fw = new FileSystemWatcher(Path.GetDirectoryName(filepath), Path.GetFileName(filepath)))
    using (var mre = new ManualResetEventSlim())
    {
        fw.EnableRaisingEvents = true;
        fw.Deleted += (object sender, FileSystemEventArgs e) =>
        {
            mre.Set();
        };
        File.Delete(filepath);
        mre.Wait(timeout);
    }
}

The most elegant way I can think of is using 1 a FileSystemWatcher and subscribe to its Deleted event.

Here is some code using the FileWatcher. What 3 we want to be able to do is

await Utils.DeleteDirectoryAsync("c:\temp\foo", recurse: true);

the below implements 2 it

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Reactive;
using System.Reactive.Linq;
using System.Reactive.Subjects;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

namespace Utils
{
    internal class FileWatcher : IDisposable
    {
        readonly FileSystemWatcher _Watcher;

        public Subject<FileSystemEventArgs> Changed = new Subject<FileSystemEventArgs>();

        public FileWatcher( string file )
        {
            // Create a new FileSystemWatcher and set its properties.
            _Watcher = new FileSystemWatcher
                       {
                           Path = Path.GetDirectoryName(file),
                           NotifyFilter = NotifyFilters.LastAccess | NotifyFilters.LastWrite
                                          | NotifyFilters.FileName | NotifyFilters.DirectoryName,
                           Filter =Path.GetFileName(file) 
                       };

            // Add event handlers.
            _Watcher.Changed += OnChanged;
            _Watcher.Created += OnChanged;
            _Watcher.Deleted += OnChanged;
            _Watcher.Renamed += OnChanged;

            // Begin watching.
            _Watcher.EnableRaisingEvents = true;
        }

        // Define the event handlers.
        private void OnChanged( object source, FileSystemEventArgs e )
        {
            Changed.OnNext(e);
        }


        public void Dispose()
        {
            _Watcher.Dispose();
        }
    }
}

and some utils that take advantage of 1 the above observable.

public static class FileUtils
{
    public static IObservable<FileSystemEventArgs> ChangedObservable(string path)
    {
        if (path == null)
            return Observable.Never<FileSystemEventArgs>();

        return Observable.Using(() => new FileWatcher(path), watcher => watcher.Changed);
    }

    public static Task DeleteDirectoryAsync(string path, bool recurse)
    {
        var task = new TaskCompletionSource<Unit>();

        if (Directory.Exists(path))
        {
            ChangedObservable(path)
                .Where(f => f.ChangeType == WatcherChangeTypes.Deleted)
                .Take(1)
                .Subscribe(v => task.SetResult(Unit.Default));

            Directory.Delete(path, recurse);
        }
        else
        {
            task.SetResult(Unit.Default);
        }

        return task.Task;
    }
}

I always used this:

System.GC.Collect();
System.GC.WaitForPendingFinalizers();

See here and here

0

Directory.Delete will throw an exception 9 on the first error it encounters. If you 8 want to continue deleting as many files 7 and subdirectories as you can then you shouldn't 6 use Directory.Delete and should write your 5 own recursive delete with try/catch blocks 4 inside the loops. An example when you might 3 want to do that is if you are trying to 2 cleanup temp files and one of the files 1 has been locked.