Sponsored Content
Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting Remove contents of directory, but not directory Post 91598 by pdc on Saturday 3rd of December 2005 08:57:54 PM
Old 12-03-2005
Except that won't remove any subdirectories. Removing the "-type f" and specifying "rm -r" fixes this issue... but you'll still hit an error when find attempts to remove the "." directory. Incidentally, "find . -delete" is probably a nicer way of coding this.

Anyone else got suggestions? It seems like the kind of thing their should be a command, or flag to rm, for: a simple way to empty a directory.

Last edited by pdc; 12-03-2005 at 10:08 PM..
 

10 More Discussions You Might Find Interesting

1. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Unable to view contents of a directory

Hi, first post here be gentle. Very new to Unix. Using HP-UX 10.20 I CD into a remote directory on one machine $ cd /net/remote hostname yet when I do an ll in this directory none of the contents appear. It just is empty. when I do the same command from another machine, $ cd... (13 Replies)
Discussion started by: maddave
13 Replies

2. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Message trying to list contents of directory

I'm getting this return whenever I try to do anything on a directory root# ls -al /directory ls: .: Value too large to be stored in data type. total 0 I can change directory down two levels but can not list contents of the root of this directory. ANy one seen this? (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: sallender
1 Replies

3. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

list contents of directory

I want to list the contents of a directory, but I do not want to use the ls, is there another way?? (3 Replies)
Discussion started by: carl_vieyra
3 Replies

4. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Best way to list a directory's contents?

Hey guys! I'm so glad I found this site, I've had so many questions and have been left alone for roughly a year scanning man pages but It's just not quite cutting it for some things. So, I often like to list directories when browsing around my local machine, a friend's machine, or my web... (6 Replies)
Discussion started by: bbilheimer
6 Replies

5. Solaris

Directory should not be deleted, But the contents can be

Hi Guys, I have an user's home directory set to /home/A And A contains the following directories B & C Is there some way in solaris by which i can prevent the directories B and C from getting deleted by the user but the contents of the directories B & C can be deleted ? Also i have... (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: localhost
2 Replies

6. Shell Programming and Scripting

Create a list of directory contents

Well I did a search and didn't anything for my specific case. I got a directory with a bunch of text file. All of them have the following pattern on the filename "ABCD_<As of Date>.txt" Example: ABCD_20110301.txt ABCD_20110302.txt ABCD_20110303.txt All I want to accomplish is a Korn... (3 Replies)
Discussion started by: Shark Tek
3 Replies

7. Shell Programming and Scripting

Script that displays contents of a directory

Hello all! I am writing a script that takes in a directory name as input and if the directory exists, it shows the files inside the directory here is what I have so far (incomplete) (mostly like pseudocode) #/bin/sh echo Please enter the name of a directory read dir grep $dir... (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: subway69
2 Replies

8. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

What option will use for deleting directory with all its contents?

Hi How to completely delete directory with all it contents I try to use rmdir -r but it give error Thanks ---------- Post updated at 03:10 AM ---------- Previous update was at 02:52 AM ---------- Hi all I got the solution for my thread i use mkdir with the option -p Thanks (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: Tauatioti
1 Replies

9. AIX

Restore directory and contents from tape

Hi, I have taken a backup of a directory on my tape in using below command cd /backup find * -print|backup -ivf '/dev/rmt0' '-U' |tee -a /syslogs/backup.log and output appear in below format. a 0 rman-before-08032014 a 58403323904... (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: m_raheelahmed
2 Replies

10. Shell Programming and Scripting

Zipping contents without the actual directory

Hi , I want to zip files present in the directories listed under a parent directory without zipping the directory itself my parent directory path is /informatica/DGDMN/PowerCenter1011/server/infa_shared/SrcFiles/OTE/Final_Directory I have the below directories named as 1,2,3,4,5 listed... (9 Replies)
Discussion started by: paul1234
9 Replies
rmdir(1)						      General Commands Manual							  rmdir(1)

NAME
rmdir - Removes a directory SYNOPSIS
rmdir [-p] [-s] directory... STANDARDS
Interfaces documented on this reference page conform to industry standards as follows: rmdir: XCU5.0 Refer to the standards(5) reference page for more information about industry standards and associated tags. OPTIONS
Removes all directories in a path name. For each directory argument, the directory entry it names is removed. If the directory argument includes more than one path name component, effects equivalent to the following command occur: rmdir -p $(dirname directory) That is, rmdir recursively removes each directory in the path name. OPERANDS
The path name of an empty directory to be removed. DESCRIPTION
The rmdir command removes a directory from the system. The directory must be empty before you can remove it, and you must have write per- mission in its parent directory. Use the ls -al command to see if a directory is empty. If a directory and a subdirectory of that directory are specified in a single invocation of rmdir, the subdirectory must be specified before the parent directory so that the parent directory will be empty when rmdir tries to remove it. RESTRICTIONS
A directory must be empty before you can remove it, and you must have write permission in its parent directory. If the -p option is used, all directories in the path must be empty except for the directory being recursively removed. EXIT STATUS
The following exit values are returned: Each directory specified by directory operand was successfully removed. An error occurred. EXAMPLES
To empty and remove a directory, enter: rm mydir/* mydir/.* rmdir mydir This removes the contents of mydir, then removes the empty directory. The rm command displays an error message about trying to remove the directories . (dot) and .. (dot dot), and then rmdir removes them. Note that rm mydir/* mydir/.* first removes files with names that do not begin with a (dot), then those with names that do begin with a (dot). You may not realize that the directory contains file names that begin with a (dot) because the ls command does not normally list them unless you use the -a option to see the files whose names begin with a (dot). To remove all of the directories in the path name a/b/c, enter: rmdir -p a/b/c Use a command like this one if directory a in the current directory is empty except that it contains a directory b and a/b is empty except that it contains a directory c. ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
The following environment variables affect the execution of rmdir: Provides a default value for the internationalization variables that are unset or null. If LANG is unset or null, the corresponding value from the default locale is used. If any of the internationalization vari- ables contain an invalid setting, the utility behaves as if none of the variables had been defined. If set to a non-empty string value, overrides the values of all the other internationalization variables. Determines the locale for the interpretation of sequences of bytes of text data as characters (for example, single-byte as opposed to multibyte characters in arguments). Determines the locale for the for- mat and contents of diagnostic messages written to standard error. Determines the location of message catalogues for the processing of LC_MESSAGES. SEE ALSO
Commands: mkdir(1), ls(1), rm(1) Functions: rmdir(2), unlink(2), remove(3) Standards: standards(5) rmdir(1)
All times are GMT -4. The time now is 10:11 PM.
Unix & Linux Forums Content Copyright 1993-2022. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy