Find and Delete Empty Files

Find and Delete Empty Files

Managing large amounts of files is a time-consuming task, and it can be considered one of the best candidates for automation. Robomotion allows you to fully automate file-related tasks, such as deleting empty files from your desktop.

What Find and Delete Empty Files can do

• Core.Flow.SubFlow downloads fixtures; a Function builds msg.fixtures_dir, msg.empty_one_path and msg.empty_two_path.
• Two Core.FileSystem.Create nodes (optType: 'file', continueOnError: true) seed empty_one.txt and empty_two.txt so the demo has something to find.
• Input Dialog titled Delete empty files, message Please select the folder to delete files from...., default msg.fixtures_dir → msg.selected_folder.
• Branch (Core.Programming.Function, outputs: 2) — proceed when msg.selected_folder is non-empty; otherwise Core.Flow.Stop.
• Core.FileSystem.List with optAbsolutePath: true, optSize: true, optIsDir: true, optTop: 0 → msg.all_files_in_folder.
• Core.Flow.Label + Core.Programming.ForEach over msg.all_files_in_folder → msg.current_file; a zero-size check (outputs: 2) routes IsDir: false && Size === 0 to the delete branch and everything else to a skip branch.
• Delete branch: Function assigns msg.file_to_delete = msg.current_file.Name, Core.FileSystem.Delete (continueOnError: true), then Core.Flow.GoTo back to the loop label; the ForEach exit edge goes to Core.Flow.Stop.

Behind the scenes

• The listing is non-recursive — only the selected folder itself is inspected, so nested folders are left untouched.
• optAbsolutePath: true combined with the Function copying current_file.Name gives the delete node a fully qualified path; relative paths would resolve against the robot's working directory and delete the wrong files.
• optSize: true on the List node pre-populates the size field so the loop does not need a per-file Stat round-trip.
• Deletion is immediate — there is no confirmation dialog or audit log; wire a logger or a dry-run guard if the flow is used against real user data.
• continueOnError: true on both the seed creates and the delete makes the flow tolerant of pre-existing or locked files, so a single stubborn entry does not abort the whole cleanup.