Linux delete folder and all files

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 do I remove a folder?

I am a new user and I am trying to remove a specific folder. I am using sudo rm /path/ , but it is not working. What is the correct command to use?

It is a file catolog I am attempting to remove but I am geting a message that it is empty.

6 Answers 6

Be sure the folder is really empty (hidden files/folders might be in there). Look at the file contents again with

If you’re absolutely certain that it doesn’t contain anything you want to have (including subdirectories), delete it with

• -r is for recursive, so it will delete the folder and subfolders, even if it is non-empty
• -f is for force (this might be unnecessary).

One thing to note is that the folder should be empty, then run the following command

Another thing to note is that the command your are typing should not start with a slash(/) not unless the folder is under root.

The last option and you should be very careful while using this one, is to force removal of the directory in question including any other files/directories in it.

For a beginner I would not recommend getting into the habit of using rm -Rf or rm -r -f , this will bite you in the face sooner or later. Safer would be to create a systemwide alias. Open terminal: Ctrl + Alt + T , then type:

So you get prompted before wiping out all your vacation photo’s by accident. The second recommendation I would like to add is to use rmdir , it will complain about non-empty directories and that is exactly what you want as a newbee.

But in the sense of the question, the answer is as given here already, use -f to erase a folder.

If you are sure that the directory exists, then:

To delete the entire directory to your folders and files

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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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How to remove all files from a directory?

The closest I’ve gotten is

but that doesn’t work for files that don’t have an extension.

9 Answers 9

Linux does not use extensions. It is up to the creator of the file to decide whether the name should have an extension. Linux looks at the first few bytes to figure out what kind of file it is dealing with.

To remove all non-hidden files* in a directory use:

However, this will show an error for each sub-directory, because in this mode it is only allowed to delete files.

To remove all non-hidden files and sub-directories (along with all of their contents) in a directory use:

* Hidden files and directories are those whose names start with . (dot) character, e.g.: .hidden-file or .hidden-directory/ . Note that, in Bash, if the dotglob option (which is off by default) is set, rm will act on hidden files too, because they will be included when * is expanded by the shell to provide the list of filename arguments.

To remove a folder with all its contents (including all interior folders):

To remove all the contents of the folder (including all interior folders) but not the folder itself:

or, if you want to make sure that hidden files/directories are also removed:

To remove all the «files» from inside a folder(not removing interior folders):

Warning: if you have spaces in your path, make sure to always use quotes.

is equivalent to 2 separate rm -rf calls:

To avoid this issue, you can use ‘ single-quotes ‘ (prevents all expansions, even of shell variables) or » double-quotes » (allows expansion of shell variables, but prevents other expansions):

• rm — stands for remove
• -f — stands for force which is helpful when you don’t want to be asked/prompted if you want to remove an archive, for example.
• -r — stands for recursive which means that you want to go recursively down every folder and remove everything.

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