In Unix, how do you remove everything in the current directory and below it?

bash unix directory subdirectory delete-directory

210,209

Solution 1

Practice safe computing. Simply go up one level in the hierarchy and don't use a wildcard expression:

cd ..; rm -rf -- <dir-to-remove>

The two dashes -- tell rm that <dir-to-remove> is not a command-line option, even when it begins with a dash.

Solution 2

Will delete all files/directories below the current one.

find -mindepth 1 -delete

If you want to do the same with another directory whose name you have, you can just name that

find <name-of-directory> -mindepth 1 -delete

If you want to remove not only the sub-directories and files of it, but also the directory itself, omit -mindepth 1. Do it without the -delete to get a list of the things that will be removed.

Solution 3

What I always do is type

rm -rf *

and then hit ESC-*, and bash will expand the * to an explicit list of files and directories in the current working directory.

The benefits are:

I can review the list of files to delete before hitting ENTER.
The command history will not contain "rm -rf *" with the wildcard intact, which might then be accidentally reused in the wrong place at the wrong time. Instead, the command history will have the actual file names in there.
It has also become handy once or twice to answer "wait a second... which files did I just delete?". The file names are visible in the terminal scrollback buffer or the command history.

In fact, I like this so much that I've made it the default behavior for TAB with this line in .bashrc:

bind TAB:insert-completions

Solution 4

Use

rm -rf *

Update: The . stands for current directory, but we cannot use this. The command seems to have explicit checks for . and ... Use the wildcard globbing instead. But this can be risky.

A safer version IMO is to use:

rm -ri *

(this prompts you for confirmation before deleting every file/directory.)

Solution 5

How about:

rm -rf "$(pwd -P)"/*

View more solutions

210,209

Yen

Updated on July 08, 2022

Comments

Yen almost 2 years
I know this will delete everything in a subdirectory and below it:
```
rm -rf <subdir-name>
```
But how do you delete everything in the current directory as well as every subdirectory below it and the contents of all of those subdirectories?
- jmucchiello almost 15 years
  
  This has to be a dupe: stackoverflow.com/questions/550922/…
Admin almost 15 years

This does not delete files or subdirectories whose name starts with a period.
Admin almost 15 years

"Can be risky" is wondefully laconic.
Rich Bradshaw almost 15 years

When doing things like this, I've found a quick ls -r . first lets you see what you are going to delete. Useful to give a quick idea that you aren't going to delete the whole disk...
Yen almost 15 years

Why is it riskier than rm -rf <subdir-name>?
dirkgently almost 15 years

@liw.fi: My .bashrc typically has this: alias rm="rm -i".
tvanfosson almost 15 years

@Yen -- because if you do it in the wrong place you can get disastrous results. Using a specific name in the wrong place can only go wrong if the same subdirectory happens to exist there.
tvanfosson almost 15 years

Because you are specifically matching a named directory and are thus less likely to delete something that you don't intend to delete.
digitaljoel almost 15 years

true. in my testing, neither does rm -rf . tvanfosson has the best solution IMO with his "cd ..; rm -rf <dir-to-remove>"
Yen almost 15 years

True. I could see myself doing that pretty easily.
Johannes Schaub - litb almost 15 years

Is there any possibility that it follows ".." and tries to remove parent directories? Not that i would think it would, but i better don't try it out on my box.
dirkgently almost 15 years

You cannot possibly delete the parent while residing in the child.
Yen almost 15 years

When I tried to run this command it failed, saying: rm: cannot remove .' or ..'
dirkgently almost 15 years

Then you are left with no other option but to use the * wildcard expression.
Johannes Schaub - litb almost 15 years

doesn't it delete the directory itself too? You have to do mkdir <dir-to-remove> afterwards. But then any hardlink referring to that directory will be a distinct directory afterwards.
vpalmu almost 15 years

litb, I know I have a filesystem that allows hardlinks to directories, but I really doubt you have it too.
sth almost 15 years

@David: You're probably thinking about this story: ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/hack/recovery.html
dkretz almost 15 years

Agree. Note: "rm -rf ." would leave you in an undertimate state with no current directory. Unix abhors an indeterminate state.
Brian Campbell almost 15 years

@Joshua I have a filesystem that allows hardlinks to directories too; it's called HFS+ and anyone who is running Mac OS X 10.5 and higher has it too.
Johannes Schaub - litb almost 15 years

@Joshua, I wasn't aware that i can't do directory hard-links in linux with ext3. But i just tried and it didn't let me do it. Good point dude :)
Flimm over 12 years

To be extra safe, you need to make sure that rm doesn't interpret the directory name as an option: cd ..; rm -rf -- <dir-to-remove>
Max Hodges over 11 years

finding this now after I just deleted EVERYTHING on my server. I'm new to unix, but have a background with DOS, and the syntax is a bit different so I made a mistake. I did "rm -rf /*" intending to delete everything in the current directory, but deleted everything in root. Rackspace is restoring us now. In the future I'll keep this advice and avoid wildcards! Thanks!
irfandar over 11 years

@Yen, if you use rm ./ you might accidentally type rm . / which could be disaster.
Admin about 11 years

@MaxHodges I did something similar today on my MacBook. I accidentally did "sudo rm -R /" when trying to delete the current directory. I almost had a heart attack! Luckily, by the time I hit <CTRL> + C, it had only deleted applications A through E in /Applications. I was able to get them back easily using Pacifist and the OS X Install disk. Whew...
Tim Dearborn almost 11 years

I needed to delete all the files in sub-directories, but did not want to delete the sub-directories themselves. find <name-of-direcotry> -mindepth 2 -delete worked great!
Weboide almost 11 years

You need -mindepth 1 if you are specifying a directory (find <name-of-directory> -mindepth 1 -delete). Otherwise Johannes is right it will not delete the current working directory (when using find -delete).
Pawel over 10 years

jQuery is so powerful.
Ben Voigt about 10 years

Missing -- in this answer?
Ben Voigt about 10 years

Missing -- in this answer? This approach is awesome overall I must say.
wizonesolutions almost 9 years

IMO, this is the best answer, particularly in scripts.
sharon almost 8 years

I tried: find -mindepth 1 -delete but i got illegal option -- m but it worked great when i removed the mindepth option find . -delete
Tim Boland about 7 years

hmm...i thought he wanted to delete everything in the current directory, but not the directory itself...how do we do that?
Abbas Torabi about 4 years

better way is run this with sudo