isaacs/rimraf

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_releases

Adoption not part of the score

5851 stars · 267 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

A cross-platform Node.js implementation of the UNIX `rm -rf` command, available as both a library and CLI tool for recursively deleting files and directories. It handles platform-specific quirks like Windows EBUSY errors with fallback strategies.

Use cases

• recursively delete directories in a node script
• cross-platform rm -rf equivalent for windows
• clean build output folders before compiling
• remove node_modules or temp directories programmatically
• delete files matching a glob pattern from the command line

When to choose

• you need reliable recursive file deletion across Windows, macOS, and Linux in Node.js
• you want a battle-tested deletion utility with sync, async, and native implementations
• you need glob-based path deletion with a CLI and library API

When to avoid

• you need to delete files based on untrusted user input - this tool is unsafe for that
• you only target POSIX systems and can use the native rm command
• you need soft-delete or trash/recycle-bin behavior rather than permanent deletion

Facets

library · maturity stable

file-system cli developer-tools developer-tools files cross-platform cli cross-platform rm-rf file-deletion recursive-delete typescript npm command-line nodejs

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