Linux delete all files from directory

Delete All Files And Folders In Linux

H ow do I delete all files and folders stored in /home/jerry/movies directories under Linux operating systems?

You need to the rm command.

Open a terminal or shell (bash) prompt and type the following command to delete everything in /home/jerry/movies

OR you can use the following single command:

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Please note that all folders and files including movies will be deleted. Once deleted you will not able to get back your data. So be careful when typing rm -rf command.

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Comments on this entry are closed.

/.local/share/Trash/files# rm -rf *

Thanks for the tip about deleting all files from directory. This site always helps me for Linux tips. Thanks again !!

If i want to delete a directory containing files for which i dont have the access

can i delete those files too

If yes can you share me the command

rm -rfv nFolders/

Hi,
I am new to linux environment and using Centos 6.2 Version OS and found that some of the folder getting deleted automatically and the deleted files and folder are from recent access. How it is happening ? Do i need to change any basic settings after OS installed? Please support me to resolve this issue.

how do we delete files in a hidden directory on startup

What I am trying to accomplish here is in my system I have android sdk installed but it gives device unauthorized …. I found a solution which asks me kill the adb server using adb kill-server to delete all files in /home/user/.android which i do by cd /home/user/.android/ and rm -rf *

I wrote this in sequence up in /home/user/.profile file but except for adb kill-server nothing worked

I also tried rm -rf /home/user/.android/* too in the . profile file but again no result. I thought sudo might be missing but using it too no result.

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Linux Delete All Files In Directory Using Command Line

Linux Delete All Files In Directory

The procedure to remove all files from a directory:

1. Open the terminal application
2. To delete everything in a directory run: rm /path/to/dir/*
3. To remove all sub-directories and files: rm -r /path/to/dir/*

Let us see some examples of rm command to delete all files in a directory when using Linux operating systems.

How to remove all the files in a directory?

Suppose you have a directory called /home/vivek/data/. To list files type the ls command:
$ ls

Understanding rm command option that deleted all files in a directory

• -r : Remove directories and their contents recursively.
• -f : Force option. In other words, ignore nonexistent files and arguments, never prompt. Dangerous option. Be careful.
• -v : Verbose option. Show what rm is doing on screen.

Deleting hidden vs non-hidden files

In Linux, any file or directory that starts with a dot character called a dot file. It is to be treated as hidden file. To see hidden files pass the -a to the ls command:
ls
ls -a
ls -la
To remove all files except hidden files in a directory use:
rm /path/to/dir/*
rm -rf /path/to/dir/*
rm *
In this example, delete all files including hidden files, run:
rm -rf /path/to/dir1/<*,.*>
rm -rfv /path/to/dir1/

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Bash remove all files from a directory including hidden files using the dotglob option

If the dotglob option set, bash includes filenames beginning with a ‘.’ in the results of pathname expansion. In other words, turn on this option to delete hidden files:

See GNU/bash man page for the shopt command online here:
man bash
help shopt

Linux Remove All Files In Directory

As I said earlier one can use the unlink command too. The syntax is:
unlink filename
For example, delete file named foo.txt in the current working directory, enter:
unlink foo.txt
It can only delete a single file at a time. You can not pass multiple files or use wildcards such as *. Therefore, I strongly recommend you use the rm command as discussed above.

Conclusion

In this quick tutorial, you learned how to remove or delete all the files in a directory using the rm command. Linux offers a few more options to find and delete files. Please see the following tutorials:

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How to Remove All Files from a Directory in Linux

In this tutorial, we are going to learn how to use rm command to remove all files safely from a directory. This document helps you delete non-hidden files, files with specific extensions, hidden files inside a directory.

01. To delete all non-hidden files from a directory, type:

02. To remove all the file with the extension .txt from a directory, type:

03. To delete all non-hidden files and sub-directories along with all of their contents from a directory, run:

04. To delete all hidden files and directories from a folder, type:

05. To delete all the files from inside a folder but not removing its sub-directories:

06. To remove a folder whose name has space, make sure to always use quotes like:

You can also use backslack to remove spaces by escaping the space.

To remove the directory named ‘Good Morning’, type:

07. You can see what is being done when deleting all files in directory pass the -v option to the rm command:

08. To remove all the file from a directory having extension .sh you can use find command too,

Note: In place of «*.sh» just give «*» to delete all the files.

Understanding rm command option

rm : Remove (unlink) the FILE(s).
-f : ignore nonexistent files and arguments, never prompt
-r : remove directories and their contents recursively
-v: see what is happening

Conclusion

You need to be careful while removing the file on the Linux system. Using the command ‘rm’ will not store files in the trash. On the other hand, be careful while using wildcard like ‘*’.

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Linux / UNIX: How To Empty Directory

How To Empty Directory In Linux and Unix

1. rm command – Delete one or more files or directories.
2. find command – Find and delete all files from a specific directory.

Linux Empty Directory Using the rm Command

First, consider the following directory structure displayed using the tree command

To delete all files from /tmp/foo/ directory (i.e. empty /tmp/foo/ directory), enter:
$ cd /tmp/foo/
$ rm *
OR
$ rm /tmp/foo/*

Delete All Files Using the Find Command

Consider the following directory structure:

To delete all files from /tmp/bar/ directory (including all files from sub-directories such as /tmp/bar/dir1), enter:
$ cd /tmp/bar/
$ find . -type f -delete
OR
$ find /tmp/bar/ -type f -delete
The above find command will delete all files from /tmp/bar/ directory. It will not delete any sub-directories. To remove both files and directories, try:
find /path/to/target/dir/ -delete
The find commands options are as follows:

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• -type f : Delete on files only.
• -type d : Remove folders only.
• -delete : Delete all files from given directory name.

How to remove a full directory and all files in Linux

To remove a directory that contains other files or sub-directories, use the following rm command command. In the example, I am going to empty directory named “docs” using the rm -rf command as follows:
rm -rf /tmp/docs/*
Get verbose outputs:
rm -rfv /tmp/docs/*

The rm command options are as follows:

• -r : Delete directories and their contents recursively on Linux or Unix-like systems.
• -f : Forceful removal. In other words, ignore nonexistent files and delete whatever found.
• -v : Verbose outputs. For example, explain what is being done on screen.

Conclusion

You learned how to use the rm and find command to delete all files and sub-directories on Linux/macOS/*BSD and Unix-like systems. In other words, this is useful to empty folders on Linux. For more information see rm command help page here.

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How to remove files and directories quickly via terminal (bash shell) [closed]

Want to improve this question? Update the question so it’s on-topic for Stack Overflow.

Closed 6 years ago .

From terminal window:

When I use the rm command it can only remove files.
When I use the rmdir command it only removes empty folders.

If I have a directory nested with files and folders within folders with files and so on, is there any way to delete all the files and folders without all the strenuous command typing?

If it makes a difference, I am using the mac bash shell from terminal, not Microsoft DOS or linux.

4 Answers 4

-r «recursive» -f «force» (suppress confirmation messages)

Would remove everything (folders & files) in the current directory.

But be careful! Only execute this command if you are absolutely sure, that you are in the right directory.

Yes, there is. The -r option tells rm to be recursive, and remove the entire file hierarchy rooted at its arguments; in other words, if given a directory, it will remove all of its contents and then perform what is effectively an rmdir .

The other two options you should know are -i and -f . -i stands for interactive; it makes rm prompt you before deleting each and every file. -f stands for force; it goes ahead and deletes everything without asking. -i is safer, but -f is faster; only use it if you’re absolutely sure you’re deleting the right thing. You can specify these with -r or not; it’s an independent setting.

And as usual, you can combine switches: rm -r -i is just rm -ri , and rm -r -f is rm -rf .

Also note that what you’re learning applies to bash on every Unix OS: OS X, Linux, FreeBSD, etc. In fact, rm ‘s syntax is the same in pretty much every shell on every Unix OS. OS X, under the hood, is really a BSD Unix system.

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