Remove node_modules

rdel.ps1

# By Anders and Henkan 2014-08-07 v1
# http://ideasof.andersaberg.com

$path = $args[0]
$chars = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"

function GetFileName($num)
{	
	$name = ""	
	while($num -gt 25) {
		$name += "z"
		$num -= 26
	}
	$name += $chars[$num]	
	return $name
}

function RenameRec($xpath) {
	$counter = -1
	$items = @(Get-ChildItem $xpath | ForEach-Object -Process {$_.FullName})
	
	foreach($item in $items) {
		$counter += 1
		$filename = split-path $item -Leaf
		$name = GetFileName($counter)
		#write-host "OLD $filename NEW $name"
		if($filename -ne $name){

			#Write-Host "Renaming $item to $name"
			Rename-Item $item $name
		}
	}
	
	$folders = @(Get-ChildItem $xpath -Directory | ForEach-Object -Process {$_.FullName})
	foreach($folder in $folders) {
		RenameRec($folder)
	}
}

Write-Host "Renaming all files... (this can take a while, Ignore any errors)"
RenameRec($path)
Remove-Item $path

Usage

• Copy-paste into new file rdel.ps1
• Run .\rdel.ps1 .\node_modules from powershell

Instead of renaming files, you can just use a built in command that is able to work around the path being too long: robocopy. The following commands will create an empty directory, then use robocopy to "mirror" that directory's contents into the destination directory (e.g. node_modules) which will delete all of the files in the destination. Than you just delete the empty folder and the destination folder. I put this in a rmd.cmd file in my path:

@echo off

mkdir empty
robocopy empty %* /mir
rm empty -r
rm %* -r

Depending on the depth of the tree, your script can still fail and it isn't usable on the normal command prompt.

@joezimjs thanks, works great. No need to use powershell.