How can I recursively find a directory by name and delete its contents (including all sub-directories and files) while keeping the directory itself?

Question

Given:

I have a tree structure with folders EmptyMe on different levels
EmptyMe directories contain sub-directories and files

Required:

Empty contents of EmptyMe directories (including their sub-directories), while keeping those directories (not deleting them).

Question:

What's the Unix command to recursively find all EmptyMe directories from current level and delete all of their contents (including sub-directories), while keeping EmptyMe directories on the disc?

My attempt:

$ find . -name 'EmptyMe' -type d -exec rm -- {} +
rm: cannot remove `./a/b/c/d/EmptyMe': Is a directory

As you can see, that command attempted to remove EmptyMe, as opposed to its contents.

Nest it maybe ? find . -name 'EmptyMe' -type d -exec find {} -type f -delete \; Let me know if you want this as actual answer — Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy, Aug 16 '18 at 20:55
@Sergiy You need -mindepth 1 for the nested command, and remove -type f cause OP wants to remove directories too. — wjandrea, Aug 16 '18 at 21:29

score 10 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 16 '18 at 21:20

10

Test run:

find . -path '*/EmptyMe/*'

Real deletion:

find . -path '*/EmptyMe/*' -delete

-path '*/EmptyMe/*' means match all items that are in a directory called EmptyMe.

answered Aug 16 '18 at 21:20

wjandrea

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score 3 · Answer 2 · edited Aug 16 '18 at 23:59

One option that can be used is to nest the commands:

find . -type d -name 'EmptyMe'  -exec find {} -mindepth 1 -delete \;

The outer find -type d -name 'EmptyMe' locates the required directories, and runs the inner find command via -exec ... \;. The inner command descends into the found directory (referenced via {} ) and since we're using -delete flag here, it should follow depth-first search, removing files and then subdirectories.

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 21 '18 at 16:48

0

This works, but it gives errors if EmptyMe directories are empty.

find . -name 'EmptyMe' -type d -exec sh -c 'rm -r -- "$1"/*' sh {} \;

Error example:

rm: cannot remove ‘./EmptyMe/*’: No such file or directory

answered Aug 21 '18 at 16:48

wjandrea

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4
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Can you please update the accepted answer with the fix to avoid this error? – temuri Aug 23 '18 at 13:49
@temuri They're different solutions, so i put them in different answers – wjandrea Aug 23 '18 at 14:41
Sorry, it's not clear which solution exactly would avoid "No such file or directory" error. Can you please clarify? – temuri Aug 23 '18 at 17:05
@temuri Oh, gotcha. Sergiy's answer and my other one both avoid this error because they don't assume the EmptyMe directories have contents. – wjandrea Aug 23 '18 at 17:08

How can I recursively find a directory by name and delete its contents (including all sub-directories and files) while keeping the directory itself?

3 Answers3

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