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I had a directory structure (src/...) created by Cygwin's 7za.exe. From a command prompt I ran rmdir /s /q src.

This resulted in error messages (paraphrasing as my DOS shell has long since overflowed):

Cannot delete src/test/unit/geom

The directory is not empty

Browsing to src/test/unit/geom showed that it was indeed empty, so I ran the same rmdir command again. Same error, but pointing at src/test/unit instead. And my Explorer window that was showing the absence of contents in src/test/unit/geom dropped down to src/test/unit.

Three rmdir executions later, it is fully gone.

This is Windows 7 and set CYGWIN=nontsec had been run. I believe this has been the source of build problems for some time now, but until now I hadn't identified the culprit.

What can I do to avoid this in the future? If it happens again, what should I look for in terms of identifying corrupt aspects of the directory structure?

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What command interpreter was running as this "command prompt"? Microsoft's CMD? bash? TCC? It's not a "DOS shell", by the way. DOS has nothing to do with it; and you aren't running DOS. – JdeBP Nov 1 '11 at 0:09
@JdeBP DOS shell on Windows 7 == CMD – Raven Nov 1 '11 at 16:55
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No, that's not a DOS shell. It's a Win32 program. DOS has nothing to do with it, as I said. Moreover: I already know what comes in the box. That's not the question that you were asked. But I also know that you're the sort of person who installs things like Cygwin. So for the second time: What command interpreter were you using? – JdeBP Nov 1 '11 at 19:09
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If you can reproduce the problem, try using Sysinternals ProcMon (or FileMon) to see what's happening under the covers. It's been a while since I've look at this stuff but IIRC, cygwin performs some fancy steps to replicate Unix semantics and the results are not always perfect.

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No repro since I started looking hard at the issue, but if I ever get one I'm confident ProcMon will be the answer. – Raven Jan 7 at 1:42
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