SHEmptyRecycleBinW function (shellapi.h)

Article
02/22/2024

Empties the Recycle Bin on the specified drive.

Syntax

SHSTDAPI SHEmptyRecycleBinW(
  [in, optional] HWND    hwnd,
  [in, optional] LPCWSTR pszRootPath,
                 DWORD   dwFlags
);

Parameters

[in, optional] hwnd

Type: HWND

A handle to the parent window of any dialog boxes that might be displayed during the operation. This parameter can be NULL.

[in, optional] pszRootPath

Type: LPCTSTR

The address of a null-terminated string of maximum length MAX_PATH that contains the path of the root drive on which the Recycle Bin is located. This parameter can contain the address of a string formatted with the drive, folder, and subfolder names, for example c:\windows\system. It can also contain an empty string or NULL. If this value is an empty string or NULL, all Recycle Bins on all drives will be emptied.

dwFlags

Type: DWORD

One or more of the following values.

SHERB_NOCONFIRMATION

No dialog box confirming the deletion of the objects will be displayed.

SHERB_NOPROGRESSUI

No dialog box indicating the progress will be displayed.

SHERB_NOSOUND

No sound will be played when the operation is complete.

Return value

Type: HRESULT

If this function succeeds, it returns S_OK. Otherwise, it returns an HRESULT error code.

Remarks

Note

The shellapi.h header defines SHEmptyRecycleBin as an alias that automatically selects the ANSI or Unicode version of this function based on the definition of the UNICODE preprocessor constant. Mixing usage of the encoding-neutral alias with code that is not encoding-neutral can lead to mismatches that result in compilation or runtime errors. For more information, see Conventions for Function Prototypes.

Requirements

Requirement	Value
Minimum supported client	Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP [desktop apps only]
Minimum supported server	Windows 2000 Server [desktop apps only]
Target Platform	Windows
Header	shellapi.h
Library	Shell32.lib
DLL	Shell32.dll (version 4.71 or later)
API set	ext-ms-win-shell-shell32-l1-2-2 (introduced in Windows 10, version 10.0.14393)

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