DigitalVolcano Software Support

There appears to be an issue Remove Empty Folders - Not Removing the folders, or at least not all that it should.

Haven't put my finger on it yet.

DC 3.0
Win7 x64

This is what I've been doing ...

archive (ZIP'd) files on drive S:
some time ago, these same files would have been extracted on to drive M:
the archives were kept as a backup source

What I have been doing of late is extracting the ZIP'd archives, into individual directories. (ExtractNow makes that easy to do.)
Extracted, I am then using DC to compare the newly extract files to my some time ago extractions, looking for oddities that may have occurred.

So as it is, in general, I expect & want DC to find everything newly extract to be dup's of my "some time ago" extractions. And it does.

But what it is not doing, or at least not doing fully, completely, is the Remove Empty Folders bit.

I've been doing this in batches. And each time, the Remove Empty Folders has been coming up short, so after the fact, I look in the folders, verify empty, & remove.

The last run, I had 40 archives, extracted into 40 directories. DC found all the expected dups & deleted them, but only deleted two of the Empty Folders, leaving 38 Empty Folders.


And I'm not sure why it is doing that? (Using the Free version, so don't know if the issue persists in Pro?)

Since I'm using two entirely different drive tree's (S: & M:) I have been using Select Assistant, Select by Location..., entering M:\ as the path to preserve, that way only files on S: will be selected, which is fine, as I expect them to be dups, & can freely delete them in mass, without worry.

Don't recall DC leaving behind empty directories before, but for some reason, it is now?

18 archives, extracted (with ExtractNow) to S:
moved to M:
(to see if the different drives could be the problem)

scan & remove dups, using Select by Location, & remove empties

only removed 1 of the 18 empties

---

9 archives moved to M:
extracted using 7-zip (7zip.exe x *)

scan & remove dups, using Select by Location, & remove empties

ALL 9 empty directories were removed

... so what changed, what is the difference there?
ExtractNow doing something funky with permissions perhaps?

---

11 archives each extracted individually into a subdirectory (OLD) on S: using Salamander's Unpack (archive extraction)

scan & remove dups, using Select by Location, & remove empties

9 empty directories were removed, but 2 remained?

---

back to original method & trees
3 archives
...
1 of 3 empties

---

again, but 7-zip
3 archives
...

again, but 7-zip, & all files on M:

-------

in every case, I am delete directly (not to Recycle Bin)
in every case DC's completion dialog states "xx folder(s) have been removed" (though they were not)

thinking that one time where it all worked correctly was a fluke?
:scratches head:

There is one known issue with the empty folder removal.

For instance: DC has cleared out a directory tree so it it empty, ready for removal. If one folder in this tree was empty before the scan (no files), DC doesn't 'know' about it, doesn't add it to the list for removal, so everything from this folder downwards doesn't get removed.

Improving directory removal is on the to-do list!