>I am writing a program that needs to check for the existence of a particular directory. It then needs to delete everything underneath that direcotry (to include other folders) and the very last step is to delete the directory itself.

Jeffrey,

With the Windows Script Host it's a snap. Once you've verified the existence of the directory with the DIRECTORY() function

oFSO = CREATEOBJECT("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
* lcdir is the directory to delete
oFSO.DeleteFolder(lcdir, .T.)

Note that this deletes the folder, files, any sub-folders completely. IOW, they're not sent to the Recycle bin. The .T. parameter forces the deletion of any read-only files. All other file, including hidden and system folders are deleted regardless.