How to delete directories with path/names too long for normal delete

Use the 7-Zip File Manager to delete them.

If you are still having trouble, ensure that you utilize Shift+Delete inside the 7-Zip File Manager. Otherwise, Windows tries to move them to the Recycle Bin (which will fail again).

None of the other (free) answers here worked for me, but I found one on another site:

rimraf <dir>

rimraf is a Node.js package, so you will need to install Node.js which includes npm. Then you can run:

npm install -g rimraf

Then you can run rimraf from the command line.

I found this solution because npm itself was causing this problem due to the way it nests dependencies.

By the way, rimraf gets its name from the UNIX command rm -rf, which recursively deletes files and folders.

I believe I've found a way to delete things from cmd. Originally I tried the del command, but that didn't work. Then I remembered rmdir. Doing the following:

rmdir /S /Q <dir>

seems to have worked.

Without installing additional software you can use subst command to temporary create an alias to a long named directory.

e.g. If you want to delete folder C:\Very long directory\that exceed\length limit\blah blah blah\abcde\folder to be deleted you can use the command

subst x: "C:\Very long directory\that exceed\length limit\blah blah blah\abcde"

and then you can delete X:\folder to be deleted in Windows Explorer or in command prompt easily. To remove the temporary drive letter alias use the command

subst x: /d