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deleting only directory not files

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Operating Systems Linux deleting only directory not files
# 8  
Old 04-13-2008
Quote:
Originally Posted by radoulov

What's wrong with:
rm -r */

That's right, sometimes we miss the simple...Smilie
# 9  
Old 04-13-2008
yes sometimes we just miss the simplest things. however take note it still suffers from "argument too long" issues if there are too many directories ( maybe there's a workaround somewhere)
Code:
# ls -p | grep "/" | wc -l
31998
# rm -r */
bash: /bin/rm: Argument list too long
# ls -p|awk '/\/$/&&!/\./' | xargs -i rm -rf "{}"
# ls -p | grep "/" | wc -l
0

# 10  
Old 04-13-2008
Quote:
Originally Posted by ghostdog74
yes sometimes we just miss the simplest things. however take note it still suffers from "argument too long" issues if there are too many directories ( maybe there's a workaround somewhere)
[...]
My post was based on the OP requirement (~10dirs).

Anyway, I don't think ls and awk are needed in this case
and I'd try to handle pathological dirnames (embedded spaces, newlines or other special characters) .
# 11  
Old 04-13-2008
Quote:
Originally Posted by radoulov
My post was based on the OP requirement (~10dirs).
yes, that's why rm -f */ is the simplest solution to his problem. No doubt about that.
# 12  
Old 04-13-2008
Quote:
Originally Posted by ghostdog74
yes, that's why rm -f */ is the simplest solution to his problem. No doubt about that.

Just to make it clear,
I don't think ls and awk are needed in the case you describe (argument list too long).

Code:
for d in */;do rm -r "$d";done

Or better (needs to be adjusted for xargs that doesn't support the null option):

Code:
xargs -0n1000 rm -r < <(printf "%s\000" */)

If you have zsh:

Code:
autoload -U zargs
zargs *(/) -- rm -r

Last edited by radoulov; 04-13-2008 at 02:36 PM.. Reason: corrected
# 13  
Old 05-02-2008
damn,
i was just experimenting rm -rf */
i just typed /*
# 14  
Old 05-02-2008
find /path -type d -exec rm -rf {} \;
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