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Delete a directory - very fast

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# 1  
Old 09-19-2006
Delete a directory - very fast
Hi,
I have a directory which has 1000 other directories and files inside them. I want to delete the base direcotry very fast.

Ex: I have

/home/xxx/some/some1
/home/xxx/some/some2
/home/xxx/some/some3
.
.
.
/home/xxx/some/some1000

Delete /home/xxx/some

If I type rm -rf /home/xxx/some -> it take more than 30 minutes....

Anyone has suggestion ?

Thanks
# 2  
Old 09-19-2006
There is no way to speed it up without speeding up the disk operations because the system call involved, rmdir, cannot operate on non-empty directories. Everything has to be recursed into and deleted individually.

Why must it be done so rapidly? Could you rename it, then continue deleting it with a background process, and do other things in the meantime?
Last edited by Corona688; 09-20-2006 at 01:23 PM.. Reason: Ack! Mixed up empty and not empty!
# 3  
Old 09-20-2006
I have to do testing and each time I test I have to delete certain directories. Every time something go wrong then I have re-do the whole thing.


Anyway thanks for trying to help.

- Jinig
# 4  
Old 09-20-2006
Quote:
Originally Posted by jingi1234
I have to do testing and each time I test I have to delete certain directories. Every time something go wrong then I have re-do the whole thing.
What is going wrong?
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