You should check out Apache's commons-io. It has a FileUtils class that will do what you want.

FileUtils.deleteDirectory(new File("directory"));

With Java 7, we can finally do this with reliable symlink detection. (I don't consider Apache's commons-io to have reliable symlink detection at this time, as it doesn't handle links on Windows created with mklink.)

For the sake of history, here's a pre-Java 7 answer, which follows symlinks.

void delete(File f) throws IOException {
  if (f.isDirectory()) {
    for (File c : f.listFiles())
      delete(c);
  }
  if (!f.delete())
    throw new FileNotFoundException("Failed to delete file: " + f);
}

Here is a bare bones main method that accepts a command line argument, you may need to append your own error checking or mold it to how you see fit.

import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
import java.io.IOException;

public class DeleteFiles {

/**
 * @param intitial arguments take in a source to read from and a 
 * destination to read to
 */
    public static void main(String[] args)
                     throws FileNotFoundException,IOException {
        File src = new File(args[0]);
        if (!src.exists() ) {
            System.out.println("FAILURE!");
        }else{
            // Gathers files in directory
            File[] a = src.listFiles();
            for (int i = 0; i < a.length; i++) {
                //Sends files to recursive deletion method
                fileDelete(a[i]);
            }
            // Deletes original source folder
            src.delete();
            System.out.println("Success!");
        }
    }

    /**
     * @param srcFile Source file to examine
     * @throws FileNotFoundException if File not found
     * @throws IOException if File not found
     */
    private static void fileDelete(File srcFile)
                     throws FileNotFoundException, IOException {
        // Checks if file is a directory
        if (srcFile.isDirectory()) {
            //Gathers files in directory
            File[] b = srcFile.listFiles();
            for (int i = 0; i < b.length; i++) {
                //Recursively deletes all files and sub-directories
                fileDelete(b[i]);
            }
            // Deletes original sub-directory file
            srcFile.delete();
        } else {
            srcFile.delete();
        }
    }
}

I hope that helps!

Guava provides a one-liner: MoreFiles.deleteRecursively().

Unlike many of the examples shared, it accounts for symbolic links and will not (by default) delete files outside the provided path.

Maybe a solution for this problem might be to reimplement the delete method of the File class using the code from erickson's answer:

public class MyFile extends File {

  ... <- copy constructor

  public boolean delete() {
    if (f.isDirectory()) {
      for (File c : f.listFiles()) {
        return new MyFile(c).delete();
      }
    } else {
        return f.delete();
    }
  }
}

rm -rf was much more performant than FileUtils.deleteDirectory.

After extensive benchmarking, we found that using rm -rf was multiple times faster than using FileUtils.deleteDirectory.

Of course, if you have a small or simple directory, it won't matter but in our case we had multiple gigabytes and deeply nested sub directories where it would take over 10 minutes with FileUtils.deleteDirectory and only 1 minute with rm -rf.

Here's our rough Java implementation to do that:

// Delete directory given and all subdirectories and files (i.e. recursively).
//
static public boolean deleteDirectory( File file ) throws IOException, InterruptedException {

    if ( file.exists() ) {

        String deleteCommand = "rm -rf " + file.getAbsolutePath();
        Runtime runtime = Runtime.getRuntime();

        Process process = runtime.exec( deleteCommand );
        process.waitFor();

        return true;
    }

    return false;

}

Worth trying if you're dealing with large or complex directories.

// Java 8 with lambda & stream, if param is directory

static boolean delRecursive(File dir) {
    return Arrays.stream(dir.listFiles()).allMatch((f) -> f.isDirectory() ? delRecursive(f) : f.delete()) && dir.delete();
}

// if param is file or directory

static boolean delRecursive(File fileOrDir) {
    return fileOrDir.isDirectory() ? Arrays.stream(fileOrDir.listFiles()).allMatch((f) -> delRecursive(f)) && fileOrDir.delete() : fileOrDir.delete();
}

Guava 21.0 and later

There is the void deleteRecursively(Path path, RecursiveDeleteOption... options) throws IOException static method of the MoreFiles class available since Guava 21.0.

Please, see the Javadoc documentation:

public static void deleteRecursively(Path path, RecursiveDeleteOption... options) throws IOException

Deletes the file or directory at the given path recursively. Deletes symbolic links, not their targets (subject to the caveat below).

If an I/O exception occurs attempting to read, open or delete any file under the given directory, this method skips that file and continues. All such exceptions are collected and, after attempting to delete all files, an IOException is thrown containing those exceptions as suppressed exceptions.

i coded this routine that has 3 safety criteria for safer use.

package ch.ethz.idsc.queuey.util;

import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;

/** recursive file/directory deletion
 * 
 * safety from erroneous use is enhanced by three criteria
 * 1) checking the depth of the directory tree T to be deleted
 * against a permitted upper bound "max_depth"
 * 2) checking the number of files to be deleted #F
 * against a permitted upper bound "max_count"
 * 3) if deletion of a file or directory fails, the process aborts */
public final class FileDelete {
    /** Example: The command
     * FileDelete.of(new File("/user/name/myapp/recordings/log20171024"), 2, 1000);
     * deletes given directory with sub directories of depth of at most 2,
     * and max number of total files less than 1000. No files are deleted
     * if directory tree exceeds 2, or total of files exceed 1000.
     * 
     * abort criteria are described at top of class
     * 
     * @param file
     * @param max_depth
     * @param max_count
     * @return
     * @throws Exception if criteria are not met */
    public static FileDelete of(File file, int max_depth, int max_count) throws IOException {
        return new FileDelete(file, max_depth, max_count);
    }

    // ---
    private final File root;
    private final int max_depth;
    private int removed = 0;

    /** @param root file or a directory. If root is a file, the file will be deleted.
     *            If root is a directory, the directory tree will be deleted.
     * @param max_depth of directory visitor
     * @param max_count of files to delete
     * @throws IOException */
    private FileDelete(final File root, final int max_depth, final int max_count) throws IOException {
        this.root = root;
        this.max_depth = max_depth;
        // ---
        final int count = visitRecursively(root, 0, false);
        if (count <= max_count) // abort criteria 2)
            visitRecursively(root, 0, true);
        else
            throw new IOException("more files to be deleted than allowed (" + max_count + "<=" + count + ") in " + root);
    }

    private int visitRecursively(final File file, final int depth, final boolean delete) throws IOException {
        if (max_depth < depth) // enforce depth limit, abort criteria 1)
            throw new IOException("directory tree exceeds permitted depth");
        // ---
        int count = 0;
        if (file.isDirectory()) // if file is a directory, recur
            for (File entry : file.listFiles())
                count += visitRecursively(entry, depth + 1, delete);
        ++count; // count file as visited
        if (delete) {
            final boolean deleted = file.delete();
            if (!deleted) // abort criteria 3)
                throw new IOException("cannot delete " + file.getAbsolutePath());
            ++removed;
        }
        return count;
    }

    public int deletedCount() {
        return removed;
    }

    public void printNotification() {
        int count = deletedCount();
        if (0 < count)
            System.out.println("deleted " + count + " file(s) in " + root);
    }
}