Rms

A file cleaning utility for DOS

To remove (delete) files from MS-DOS® use rms.c. The name of the program is taken from the Unix equivalent of "Delete", rm. However, rms.c works differently. The executable is available for download.

This is a sample program in C. It was originally written for Mark Williams® C on the Atari ST®, and later converted for Microsoft® C 7.0 running on MS-DOS®. It is not heavily commented. It should be written clearly enough that a programmer reasonably familiar with MS-DOS or operating systems in general can figure it out.

It is intended to work with fn.exe by piping the output of fn (or other programs) to rms. See the sample user documentation for examples of how to use these two programs.

This code is released to the public domain. Wear it in good health.

You may also download a pre-compiled Windows 95 version. This runs on NT 4 and 5, and Windows 95 and 98.

/*	Deletes files indicated by stdin.
	After compile, save as rms.ttp
	begun 11 12 91 crc last modified 13 01 92 crc
		added ability to remove directories
	8 8 92 converted to Messdos, C 7.0.
	8 8 92 added line to remove read only permission before del.

	1998 05 4: deletion notification strings are now the same length,
	so the display looks better.

	*/

#include <stdio.h>
#include <sys\types.h>
#include <sys\stat.h>
#include <errno.h>
#include <io.h>

#define SIZEOFBUFFER 1024

main()
{
  char buf[SIZEOFBUFFER];		/* string buffer */

  while(fgets(buf,SIZEOFBUFFER,stdin))	{
    buf[strlen(buf)-1] = 0;

    /*  make it read & writable so we can delete it.    */
    chmod (buf, _S_IREAD | _S_IWRITE);

    if ( remove(buf) )	{
      if ( !rmdir(buf) )	{
	cputs("Removing Directory: ");
	cputs(buf);
	cputs("\n\r");
      }
    } else {
      cputs("Deleting:           ");
      cputs(buf);
      cputs("\n\r");
    }
  }
}