Shell Programming and Scripting

Hello
I need little help i have following cmd:
this only able to delete files but not folder which contain that file

Code:

find /home/test/*  -name "*.testfile" -type f -exec rm -i {} \;

how to delete whole directory if file called somethingblahblah.testfile is there?
Thanks you

Code:

find /home/test  -name "*.testfile" -type f -exec rm -irf $(dirname {}) \;

Hi Ivo did you test this?

Please be very careful when suggesting the use ofrm -rf without fully knowing the consequences!

In this case before the find command is even being executed, the shell sees a command substitution $(dirname {}).

$(dirname {}) evaluates to a single dot (.), namely the current directory!

So then it executes the find command, which now becomes:

Code:

find /home/test  -name "*.testfile" -type f -exec rm -irf . \;

So for every match that find finds it executes this command:

Code:

rm -irf .

Luckily, on my system in a controlled setting, this leads to the following message..

Code:

rm: "." and ".." may not be removed

But who knows if on a different OS you may not be so lucky ...

** edit **
The Posix specification prescribes this behavior.

Code:

The rm utility is forbidden to remove the names dot and dot-dot in order to avoid the consequences of inadvertently doing something like:

rm -r .*

rm: Application Usage


--
Also: the rm option -i is diametrically opposed to the option -f, using both in the same command gives unspecified results. On my system -f overrules -i so suddenly, by adding the -f option to the OP's -i in the original post, rm does not ask before deleting a file, it just does it.

thx both

got some help on other forum, so this is final cmd:

Code:

 find /home/test/* -type f -name '*.testfile' -printf '%h\n' | sort -u | xargs rm -rf