How to recursively delete a dir after find

Question

find .   -name "DIR-NAME" -type d -delete

because i want to delete specific dir name recursively well it returns

find: cannot delete `./DIR-NAME': Directory not empty

which is expeted but I have no idea how to make -delete to delete non-empty dirs here as i can with rm -rf

Gilles Quénot · Answer 1 · 2023-03-15T17:41:36.610

8

Like this :

find . -name "DIR-NAME" -type d -exec rm -r {} +

edited Mar 15 '23 at 17:41

answered Dec 23 '14 at 20:16

Gilles Quénot

Maybe better as find . -name DIR-NAME -type d -prune -exec rm -rf {} + – Stéphane Chazelas Mar 15 '23 at 17:38
As the time that was written, that was not fully supported everywhere ^^ IIRC – Gilles Quénot Mar 15 '23 at 17:41
See find . -print0 | xargs -0 cmd vs find . -exec cmd {} + about history of -exec {} +. I'd say it was about as common in 2014 as now. My point was more about -prune. Feel free to include my comment on Andy's answer; it looks like his account is not longer active. – Stéphane Chazelas Mar 15 '23 at 17:47
For the love of god, quote your {} arguments, otherwise you have a security issue if someone make a directory with a space it can delete directories outside of the directory and even the root – Tofandel Aug 02 '23 at 20:01

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 23 '14 at 21:02

1

Before you delete directories, you could delete files. ie first run:

find .   -name "DIR-NAME" -type f -delete

Might not work if you have special file types.

answered Dec 23 '14 at 21:02

Andy

1

Wow, sure missed that argument. I'd suggest then " find . -name "DIR-NAME" -type d -exec rm -rf {} ';'" and I'll see myself out. – Andy Dec 23 '14 at 21:17
ITYM something like LC_ALL=C find . '(' -path '*/DIR-NAME/*' -o -name DIR-NAME -type d ')' -delete. – Stéphane Chazelas Mar 15 '23 at 17:40

2 Answers2