Sponsored Content
Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers Removing empty folders using 'find' Post 302186559 by era on Thursday 17th of April 2008 01:59:48 PM
Old 04-17-2008
Code:
find . -depth -type d -empty -print |
grep -v "not this one please" |
xargs rmdir

If you have newlines or other tricky stuff in your path names, you need to take some additional precautions, but let's assume you don't.

To grep for more than one thing at the same time, egrep is helpful.

Code:
egrep -v 'not this one|or this one|nor this one either|neither this'

 

10 More Discussions You Might Find Interesting

1. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Removing old folders

All Please help me to remove old files. For example /usr/exp/ - inside this Apr 02 - dir02 Apr 03 - dir03 Apr 04 - dir04 Apr 05 - dir05 Apr 06 - dir06 Apr 07 - dir07 Apr 03 - file03 I want to delete all the folders 2 days before created.Not the fil03 even though it is 2 days old. ... (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: DeepakXavier
1 Replies

2. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

zip nesting empty folders

I'm using the following command to zip a project file, but when it finishes, the resulting zip file contains all the directories above the file I wanted zipped, myapp.app, each one empty until you get to the actual app. zip -r myapp.app.zip ... (0 Replies)
Discussion started by: groundlevel
0 Replies

3. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

how to find empty folders without using -empty

hi all: my solaris FIND does not support find myFolder -type d -empty how can i find the empty folders? thanks! (7 Replies)
Discussion started by: lasse
7 Replies

4. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Removing empty folders using the "find" command

Hi I'm trying to remove empty sub-folders from 1 main folder using the find method, but the "- empty" parameter isn't recognized by my Unix version. Any idea how to implement such thing? Thanks. (3 Replies)
Discussion started by: biot
3 Replies

5. Shell Programming and Scripting

removing empty tags

Hi, I have a file as shown below. <crown:clinicalData> <crown:alb date="2008-07-10" lowValue="3.50" method="BCG" value="3.50"/> <crown:cre date="2008-07-10" value="9.5"></crown:cre> <crown:ktvHdAd> </crown:ktvHdAd> <crown:ktvPdAd> </crown:ktvPdAd> ... (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: vijayhai
1 Replies

6. Shell Programming and Scripting

Find empty folders

In current folder, there are many subfolders, subfolder's subfolders... under it. How can I find out the empty folders with no files in it. I only need the top folder list. For example, I have folders like below: a/b/c a/b/x/x.txt a/s a/s/y I need get the folder a/s, but not... (6 Replies)
Discussion started by: rdcwayx
6 Replies

7. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Removing empty folders

Hello, I have a folder that contains all my music. Recently, I started using a different media player, and I let it manage my music folder. It has sorted all my music neatly in folders by artist and album. However, all the old folders that the songs used to be in are still there, yet they are... (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: emveedee
2 Replies

8. Shell Programming and Scripting

Deleting empty folders

Hey, I need help with writing a shell script that deletes empty folders..anyone? :) Thank you! (5 Replies)
Discussion started by: putukas
5 Replies

9. Windows & DOS: Issues & Discussions

Empty folders with SFU

Hi all, i am currently setting my windows XP environment to use with Services for Unix (NFS Client) to mount my unix file system as a network drive. However, though i could mount the unix file directory successful, but the folder is empty (which is not). Why is this so? i have imported my unix... (6 Replies)
Discussion started by: lchunleo
6 Replies

10. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

How to delete some empty folders?

I have an amount of folders and I want to delete only the empty ones. But I have more than 200 empty folders, so I would preffer do not delete one by one... I know it is possible, but I don't know how. I've tried with the size, using 'du' command, and saving the result in a file. After that, I made... (3 Replies)
Discussion started by: saitsug
3 Replies
rmdir(1)						      General Commands Manual							  rmdir(1)

NAME
rmdir - remove directories SYNOPSIS
dir ... DESCRIPTION
removes the directory entry for each dir operand that refers to an empty directory. Directories are removed in the order specified. Consequently, if a directory and a subdirectory of that directory are both specified as arguments, the subdirectory must be specified before the parent directory so that the parent directory will be empty when tries to remove it. Removal of a directory requires write and search (execute) permission in its parent directory, but no permissions on the directory itself; but if the sticky bit is set on the parent directory, only the owner of the directory, the owner of the parent directory, or a user having appropriate privileges can remove the directory. Options recognizes the following options: Force each directory to be removed without prompting for confirmation, regardless of the presence of the option. This option also suppresses diagnostic messages regarding non-exis- tent operands. This option does not suppress any diagnostic messages other than those regarding non-existent operands. To suppress all error message and interactive prompts, the option should be used while redirecting the standard error output to This option ignores any previous occurrence of the option. Write a prompt to the standard error output requesting confirmation before removing each directory. This option ignores any previous occurrence of the option. Path removal. If, after removing a directory with more than one pathname component, the parent directory of that directory is now empty, removes the empty parent directory. This continues until encounters a non-empty parent directory, or until all components of the original pathname have been removed. When used in conjunction with the option, asks whether to remove each directory component of a path. EXTERNAL INFLUENCES
Environment Variables provides a default value for the internationalization variables that are unset or null. If is unset or null, the default value of "C" (see lang(5)) is used. If any of the internationalization variables contains an invalid setting, will behave as if all internationalization variables are set to "C". See environ(5). If set to a non-empty string value, overrides the values of all the other internationalization variables. determines the interpretation of dir names as single and/or multi-byte characters, the classification of characters as printable, and the characters matched by character class expressions in regular expressions. determines the locale that should be used to affect the format and contents of diagnostic messages written to standard error and informa- tive messages written to standard output. determines the location of message catalogues for the processing of International Code Set Support Single- and multi-byte character code sets are supported. DIAGNOSTICS
Generally self-explanatory. Note that the option does not suppress all diagnostic messages. EXAMPLES
To remove directories with a prompt for verification: directories To remove as much as possible of a path, type: SEE ALSO
rm(1), rmdir(2), stat(2). STANDARDS CONFORMANCE
rmdir: SVID2, XPG2, XPG3, XPG4 rmdir(1)
All times are GMT -4. The time now is 04:05 AM.
Unix & Linux Forums Content Copyright 1993-2022. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy