Re: [Dev-luatex] writing a rmdir function in texlua

3 Apr 2008


      Norbert Preining wrote:
...
Hi all,
for the TeX Live uninstaller I am trying to write a rmdir function for
win32 in texlua which should work like rm -rf on unix.
My first try was:
function rmdir(dirn)
  if os.type == 'windows' then
    -- we have to replace all / with \
    foo = string.gsub(dirn, '/', '\\')
    ret = os.spawn({"rmdir", "/s", "/q", foo})
  else
    ret = os.spawn({"rm", "-rf", dirn})
  end
  if ret then
    return ret
  else
    io.stderr:write(filename..': removing '..dirn.." didn't work\n")
  end
  return ret
end
(No checks by now, will come later ...)
But that didn't work and did spit out always the io.stderr message.
rmdir is a system command

(1) use os.execute for system commands
(2) in the case of gnutools (you can never be sure it they are 
installed, use the funny cygwin syntax or so)

anyhow, this works:

function rmdir(name)
     if os.type == 'windows' then
         os.execute("rmdir /s /q " .. name:gsub('/', '\\'))
     else
         os.spawn({"rm", "-rf", dirn})
     end
     local ok = lfs.attributes(name)
     if ok then
         io.stderr:write(string.format("removing '%s' didn't work our 
well\n",name))
     end
     return ok
end

concerning your code:
...
if os.type == 'windows' then
    foo = string.gsub(dirn, '/', '\\')
    ret = os.spawn({"rmdir", "/s", "/q", foo})
local ret
     if os.type == 'windows' then
       local foo = string.gsub(dirn, '/', '\\')
       ret = os.spawn({"rmdir", "/s", "/q", foo})

in order not to polute the global namespace


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