How to remove many (200 000) files?

Question

I must remove 200 000 files (all of them) from a folder, and I don't want to delete the folder itself.

using rm, I get an "Argument list too long" error. I've tried to do something with xargs, but I'm not a Shell Guy, so it doesn't work:

find -name * | xargs rm -f

Solution 1

$ find /path/to/folder -type f -delete

Solution 2

You are doing everything right. It is the '*' that gives you a problem (the shell is expanding it into list of files instead of the find). The right syntax could be:

cd <your_directory>; find . -type f | xargs rm -f
find <your_directory> -type f | xargs rm -f

(The latter is a bit less efficient since it will pass longer names to xargs, but you will hardly notice :-) )

Alternatively, you could escape your '*' like this (however in that case it will also try also remove "." and ".."; it is not a biggie - you will just get a little warning :-) ):

find . -name '*' | xargs rm -f
find . -name "*" | xargs rm -f
find . -name \* | xargs rm -f

If your file names contain spaces then use this:

find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 rm -f

Solution 3

The following command will delete all files from the current directory:

find . -type f -exec rm {} \;

Solution 4

you can try

find /path/to/folder -type f -print0  | xargs -0 rm -f

or

find /path/to/folder -type f -exec rm -f "{}" +

Solution 5

Kudos to quantas answer, here are some additions.

If you like to delete files with a particular name pattern you can write it like this. Also added -print so you can see what's happening as the files are being deleted.

sudo find /home/mydirectory -name "*.jpg" -type f -print -delete

This for instance deletes all jpegs in mydirectory.

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Comments

[eatyourpeas]

Why don't delete the folder and recreate it after deletion?

[FMaz008]

@garconcn Just reading this 9 years later. I don't remember why I had this problem in the first place, but I would guess either I didn't provide the full context to make the question readable, or... that's was a good idea.

[DerfK]

It's probably worth mentioning that GNU find (as used by most Linux distributions) can delete files on its own using -delete. This also avoids problems with files containing quotes or newline characters (though you could use GNU find's -print0 and GNU xarg's -0 options to fix that).

[user9517]

This doesn't work if you have a filename containing a space.

[dtoubelis]

@lain: Yes, I was just in a process of editing my answer to include the trick for white spaces :-)

[poige]

-name '*' doesn't mean "all files". Files are said with: -type f

[poige]

@DerfK, nice remark! Also, lots of ppl tend to play with xargs meanwhile find has -exec command {} + syntax.