PHP: Simplest way to delete a folder (including its contents)

Question

The rmdir() function fails if the folder contains any files. I can loop through all of the the files in the directory with something like this:

foreach (scandir($dir) as $item) {
    if ($item == '.' || $item == '..') continue;
    unlink($dir.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.$item);
}
rmdir($dir);

Is there any way to just delete it all at once?

Answer 1

Well, there's always

system('/bin/rm -rf ' . escapeshellarg($dir));

where available.