How do I recursively remove subdirectories and files, but not the first parent directory?
Solution 1
The previous answer is almost correct. However, you shouldn't quote the shell glob characters if you want them to work. So, this is the command you're looking for:
rm -rf "/target/directory with spaces/"*
Note that the * is outside of the double quotes. This form would also work:
rm -rf /target/directory\ with\ spaces/*
If you have the *
in quotes as shown above, then it will only attempt to remove the single file literally named *
inside the target directory.
Solution 2
Three more options.
-
Use
find
with-mindepth 1
and-delete
:−mindepth levels
Do not apply any tests or actions at levels less than levels (a non‐negative integer).
−mindepth 1 means process all files except the command line arguments.-delete
Delete files; true if removal succeeded. If the removal failed, an error message is issued. If −delete fails, find’s exit status will be nonzero (when it eventually exits). Use of −delete automatically turns on the −depth option.
Test carefully with the -depth option before using this option.# optimal? # -xdev don't follow links to other filesystems find '/target/dir with spaces/' -xdev -mindepth 1 -delete # Sergey's version # -xdev don't follow links to other filesystems # -depth process depth-first not breadth-first find '/target/dir with spaces/' -xdev -depth -mindepth1 -exec rm -rf {} \;
2. Use find
, but with files, not directories. This avoids the need to rm -rf
:
# delete all the files;
find '/target/dir with spaces/' -type f -exec rm {} \;
# then get all the dirs but parent
find '/target/dir with spaces/' -mindepth 1 -depth -type d -exec rmdir {} \;
# near-equivalent, slightly easier for new users to remember
find '/target/dir with spaces/' -type f -print0 | xargs -0 rm
find '/target/dir with spaces/' -mindepth 1 -depth -type d -print0 | xargs -0 rmdir
3. Go ahead and remove the parent directory, but recreate it. You could create a bash function to do this with one command; here's a simple one-liner:
rm -rf '/target/dir with spaces' ; mkdir '/target/dir with spaces'
Solution 3
How about
rm -rf /target/directory\ path/*
If there may be files starting with . in the target directory.
rm -rf "/target/directory path/*" "/target/directory path/.??*"
This second will match everything starting with a ., except . and .. It will fail on names like .a, but that isn't very common. It could be tweaked if necessary to cover all of the cases.
Solution 4
find /target/directory/ -xdev -depth -mindepth 1 -exec rm -Rf {} \;
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Michael Prescott
Updated on September 17, 2022Comments
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Michael Prescott over 1 year
I'm able to use the following to remove the target directory and recursively all of its subdirectories and contents.
find '/target/directory/' -type d -name '*' -print0 | xargs -0 rm -rf
However, I do not want the target directory to be removed. How can I remove just the files in the target, the subdirectories, and their contents?
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Michael Prescott over 14 yearsI tried both and they don't work for me. Perhaps it is because my target directory path has spaces in it? rm -rf '/target/directory path/*' It gives no error, but the subdirectories remain.
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KeithB over 14 yearsYou need to escape the spaces, either with a backslash (\) before the space, or by enclosing the entire directory name in quotes ("). I edited the examples to show this.
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Michael Prescott over 14 yearsThanks, I tried that to as shown in my previous comment and still no go. (I'm using OS X, does that matter?)
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Michael Prescott over 14 yearsYes, just using the quotes. If I remove the * and so I'm only using rm -rf "/target/directory path/" the "directory path" directory will be removed along with "directory path" subdirectories. If I use the rm -rf "/target/directory path/*", nothing happens.
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Michael Prescott over 14 yearsI suppose I could accomplish what I want in two steps, recursively delete the "/target/directory path" then create a new "/target/directory path". That just seems weird.
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The Unfun Cat over 10 yearsThis does not work with hidden files and folders. I had to do it once more with a