delete subfolders without deleting parent folder

Question

For this type of dir structure :

/config/filegroups/filegroupA/files/fileA1.txt
/config/filegroups/filegroupA/files/fileA2.txt
/config/filegroups/filegroupB/files/fileB1.txt
/config/filegroups/filegroupB/files/fileB2.txt
...

I know that I can use rm -rf /config/filesgroups to delete parent folder and all sub-folders ...

but I want to delete only /filegroupA , /filegroupB , etc. , and not delete /config/filegroups

@dsumsky By default bash doesn't include '.' folders in pathname expansion. Which may or may not be desired. Myself I do shopt -s dotglob in .bashrc to fix that. Just a side note that somebody might find useful ;). — Miroslav Koškár, Aug 15 '13 at 20:58
Did any o fthis work for you? If so, would you mind accepting an answer, in order to help others (likw me) who want to do the same thing? — Mawg says reinstate Monica, Oct 24 '16 at 09:41

score 41 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 16 '13 at 08:12

41

rm -rf /config/filegroups/*

If you want to delete only directories (and symlinks to directories), leaving any files in /config/filegroups untouched, you can use a trailing slash:

rm -rf /config/filegroups/*/

If you want to delete directories with names beginning with a . as well, assuming you have a fairly recent bash, you should use the dotglob shell option:

shopt -s dotglob
rm -rf /config/filegroups/*/
shopt -u dotglob

answered Aug 16 '13 at 08:12

evilsoup

6,807
3
34
40

1

and please not that it will not work for rm -rf "/config/filegroups/*" – Ilya Yevlampiev Nov 23 '17 at 12:10

score 8 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 09 '14 at 03:09

8

I prefer using find with -exec, that would make your call something like this:

find /config/filegroups/ -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -type d -exec rm -rf {} \;

answered Nov 09 '14 at 03:09

Panthro

201

Lesmana · Answer 3 · 2013-08-16T11:15:08.443

5

This will delete all files and directories under /config/filegroups including "hidden" files and directories (names starting with .).

find /config/filegroups -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 | xargs rm -rf

If the file or directory names contain spaces you have to do it like this:

find /config/filegroups -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -print0 | xargs -0 rm -rf

Bonus: you can first check what is going to be deleted like this:

find /config/filegroups -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1

If you want to keep certain files or directories you can do it like this:

find /config/filegroups -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -not -name "keep"

edited Aug 16 '13 at 11:15

answered Aug 16 '13 at 02:08

Lesmana

27,439

Is there any reason not to use find's -delete option? – evilsoup Aug 16 '13 at 08:13
4

-delete refuses to delete non empty directories. -maxdepth overrides -depth, which is needed by -delete to delete non empty directories. Without -maxdepth you cannot easily see which directories are going to be deleted because it also lists the files inside the directories. Not using -maxdepth also means you cannot easily use filters like -name. Furthermore -delete deletes the directories by deleting all the objects inside first, which can take a long time if it is a big and deep tree. – Lesmana Aug 16 '13 at 10:46

score 1 · Answer 4 · edited Feb 02 '21 at 07:26

1

Try this:

find /config/filegroups/* -type d -name filegroupA -prune -exec rm -rf {} \;

edited Feb 02 '21 at 07:26

AdminBee

22,803

answered Feb 02 '21 at 04:42

Lucky star

11

Mantisimo · Answer 5 · 2019-05-28T20:07:54.820

-2

If you are already in the folder you can just type rm -rf ./**

So:

cd /config/filesgroups
rm -rf ./**

This is a glob pattern to delete all the subfolders from the local path..

./ referring to the local folder... and ** for all the folders beneath..

edited May 28 '19 at 20:07

answered May 28 '19 at 18:26

Mantisimo

97

1

Which folder, and why `**`` – RalfFriedl May 28 '19 at 18:35
1

This would be exactly the same as rm -rf ./*, except that you are likely to get diagnostic messages about "No such file or directory" if you're not using -f in your command (since the top-most directory would be recursively deleted before its contents is processed by rm). – Kusalananda May 28 '19 at 20:13

delete subfolders without deleting parent folder

5 Answers5