UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi,

I want to produce a text file representing a list of empty directories on a unix system starting from a specified directory.
I hope I explained well my problem.

Thanks in advance.

If you're just looking to delete empty directories, you can use this:

Code:

find . -exec rmdir {} \;

but use it with caution! It'll go ahead and remove all empty directories in the specified path, skipping regular files and directories that contain other files.

As far as just creating a list, I'm not sure...

use -print after the semicolon so you can see a list of the directories you just deleted.

Figured out a better way.

Code:

find . -type d -links 2 -exec echo '{}' >> somefile \;

Hi Oombera,

thanks for your suggestion.
However, it doesn't seem to work 100%. it returns all the directories, empty or not. I must say, I tried your command on a Iseries (AS400) UNIX shell.
I will try it on a real UNIX (sun solaris) machine.
I'll keep you in touch.

PS. with you it worked well?

Thanks

Yea - for me it returned only the empty directories. Let me know if it works for you on the solaris machine...

as400 is more mainframe then it is a unix.

as400 commands are really weird, iv only had a brief experiance with as400 when i used to tool around on it when i worked for a school.

it wouldnt surpise me that the find command didnt perform as expected on an as400.

oombera your orig command would work. i am haveing a hard time understanding what the use of the -links 2 is for in this instance. unless a file has 2 links to it it will not be posted.

find . -type d -exec rmdir {} \; -print

this is what you would be looking for.