Remove many many many files from a folder

Question

I have a folder with 137795 files in it. I need to delete all of them. When I run rm * I get -bash: /bin/rm: Argument list too long. How do I get past this error?

Solution 1

As I can see you don't need to remove your dir , only files inside. So you can recreate it

rm -r /path/to/dir && mkdir /path/to/dir

or even delete only files inside

find /path/to/dir -type f -delete

afair first one works faster.

UPD. Note that way with find might be not optimal from space consumption point of view, as directory size will be reduced only after fsck. Details.

Solution 2

Workaround #1:

find /path/to/dir -delete

Workaround #2:

rm a*;

rm b*;

rm c*;

etc

Comments

[rush]

you don't need to add -name "*" to find all files. It finds so by default.

[jsbillings]

using -name "*" seems a bit redundant, could you explain why you chose that instead of just a find /path/to/dir -delete, other than just using the same glob as the OP?

[jsbillings]

Also, depending on the implementation or age of your find, "*" might not include files that start with a "." (current versions of findutils does include that dotted files).

[David Oneill]

Thanks - I knew there was going to be some elegant solution.

[clerksx]

Do not parse ls, or expect things to break. Badly. mywiki.wooledge.org/ParsingLs

[Arcege]

I had mentioned that above: "if there are no special characters".