octave mkdir fails after recursive rmdir - octave

Question

I have a code that creates a subfolder but first removes the subfolder if it already existed. I am using Octave3.6.4_gcc4.6.2 for MinGW on a Win7 pro machine. I noticed that mkdir fails if the subfolder existed and contained several files. It seems like rmdir has not completed in the background before the next lines of code are executed. Below is a sample of the test code.
parentDir = 'C:\Temp\rmDir';
childDir = fullfile(parentDir, 'output');
if (exist(childDir, 'dir') ~= 0)
[status] = rmdir(childDir, 's');
disp(status);
end;
[status] = mkdir(parentDir, 'output');
disp(status);
disp(exist(childDir, 'dir'));
Below is the Octave result for when the subfolder does not exist. This works as expected.
octave:5> testrmdir
1
7
Below is the Octave result for when a subfolder exists and is empty. This works as expected.
octave:6> testrmdir
1
1
7
Below is the Octave result for when a subfolder exists and contains 3 PNG files with a total size of 349 KB. Status is 1 for both mkdir and rmdir. However, the exist function reports that the folder does not exist. I confirm from windows explorer that the subfolder is deleted. My guess is that when mkdir executes, the files are still being deleted by the prior rmdir function. So mkdir reports success because the subfolder has not been deleted by rmdir yet. However, by the time exist is executed rmdir has completed and so the subfolder no longer exists.
octave:7> testrmdir
1
1
0
I tried different file types with the following results:
2 PNG files, 232 KB total - pass
4 PNG files, 465 KB total - fail
3 PNG files, 349 KB total - fail
3 csv files, 518 KB total - pass
5 csv files, 777 KB total - fail
The behavior is the same when I run Octave from the command line. I have used the same code on MATLAB in the past without any noticeable issues. For now, I had to switch to Octave for test automation on a different machine.
Does this make sense? Any suggestions on how to make this code work regardless of the subfolder contents or size?
Not sure if this is important, but I have the following setting in the resource file: confirm_recursive_rmdir(false).

Answer 1

I changed the if statement to a while loop and this fixed the problem (i.e. all I did was replace "if" with "while"). Then I added a counter in the while loop and saw that rmdir was successful on the first iteration. Therefore, I cannot explain why the code does not work with an if statement. See expanded code with new counter below. But like I said, the code also works if I simply replace "if" in the original code with "while".
parentDir = 'C:\Temp\rmDir';
childDir = fullfile(parentDir, 'output');
count = 0;
while (exist(childDir, 'dir') ~= 0)
%if (exist(childDir, 'dir') ~= 0)
count++
[status] = rmdir(childDir, 's');
disp(status);
disp(count);
end;
[status] = mkdir(parentDir, 'output');
disp(status);
disp(exist(childDir, 'dir'));