rm -rf doesn't work for an empty directory

Question

In terminal I try to delete a directory but that doesn't work:

myuser$ rm -rf foo/
rm: foo/: Directory not empty

In my main directory I have only foo :

myuser$ ls
foo

I haven't any problem with my 'ls -la' command:

myuser$ ls -la
drwxrwxrwx@ 1 myuser  staff  65536  1 mai 10:53 .
drwxrwxrwx@ 1 myuser  staff  32768 28 aoû  2013 ..
drwxrwxrwx  1 myuser  staff  32768  1 mai 10:36 foo

Directory foo seems to be empty :

myuser$ ls foo/

myuser$ ls -la foo/
ls:  : No such file or directory
total 192
drwxrwxrwx  1 myuser  staff  32768  1 mai 10:36 .
drwxrwxrwx@ 1 myuser  staff  65536  1 mai 10:53 ..

But the line "ls: : No such file or directory" is weird. And I think it's the reason I can't delete this directory. We could see too, that "ls foo" return an empty line, like there is something, but what? And how delete it?

Thanks

Solution 1

I reckon you might have a file in the foo directory with unprintable characters in it's name. Compare the characters you see in the ls output with the actual characters ls outputs.

cd foo
ls             # you see what your terminal lets you see
ls | od -a     # you see the character codes *really* coming from ls

There are various methods to help delete a file whose name you can't easily see or type. Here you could use the interactive -i option of rm.

cd foo
rm -i *

Obviously, be careful with this. And only say y to the one you want to delete.

As to why your first rm -rf didn't delete it... I wonder if you have rm aliased? Use alias rm to see. You can temporarily run the real version of rm (bypassing the alias) using \rm -rf foo.

Solution 2

The "Directory not empty" message is quite misleading. Normally, an rm -rf will remove everything in a directory, recursively, so it wouldn't matter if it's empty or not.

In this case, there are some things you might want to check:

• Try seeing if there's anything mounted in this directory with df -h, and unmount if necessary
• Try checking if there's a file open by an application, running sudo lsof foo, and quit the application(s) if necessary
• Try sudo rm -rf foo – perhaps you just don't have permissions (although I don't think that's the case here)
• Try logging out and back in
• Try rebooting the machine

Comments

[Jozef Legény]

Can you see the folder in the GUI? Can you cd into it?

[slhck]

Is that directory a mount point for something? Check with df -h. What's the output of lsof foo? Have you rebooted yet? Are there any encrypted files?

[Daniel B]

You could also run a filesystem check from Disk Utility.

[Oliver Salzburg]

This question appears to be off-topic because the user no longer has the issue

[Lqueryvg]

@Oliver, how do you know the user no longer has the issue ? They haven't responded yet, and the original question/problem seems real enough; worthy of a question and answer surely ?

[Oliver Salzburg]

@Lqueryvg: He posted an answer (which should have been a comment or an edit), which was flagged and deleted.

[kenorb]

Related: Trying to delete directory with “rm -rf”, but get message that it's not empty

[slhck]

That's wrong. rm -rf dir does remove hidden files in that directory. Try running mkdir test && touch test/.foo && rm -rf test as proof. The "directory not empty" error is a little misleading.

[MariusMatutiae]

Sorry, @slhck, but this time you are wrong. Try: mkdir ttp; cd ttp; touch .test; ls -a; rm -rf *; ls -a and you will discover that .test is still there. You owe me 2 points, thank you.

[slhck]

Your example shows something different – namely that the * glob does not include hidden files. Which is of course correct, but irrelevant to the question being asked, since there's no globbing involved. You said that "rm -rf dir will not remove hidden files", which is wrong, and which is what my example shows. rm -rf dir will delete all directory contents, regardless of whether they're dotfiles or not.