How to delete the content of all subdirectories named "output"?

Question

I downloaded a project from web.When building the project it produces output files in folder named output.The problem is there are many folders with same name.I need to manually delete the files in all output directories.

I used this command

find . -type d -name "output" -print

It displays the location of all directories with same name.

Then i used this command

find . -type d -name "output" -delete

find: cannot delete ‘./output’: Directory not empty

I don't want to delete the output folder I want to delete all the files under the output folder name.

@don_crissti it contains directories and files .i want to delete everything under the output folder. — Jeeva, May 17 '17 at 13:35
How to recursively delete a dir after find or How to delete directories based on find output? ? — ilkkachu, May 17 '17 at 13:37
@ilkkachu sorry i dont know how to do that thats y asked for help.i learned that find command to delete files so i tried to use it to delete files under directory also. — Jeeva, May 17 '17 at 13:39
@ilkkachu thanks for the link. i tried this link [link] (https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/89925/how-to-delete-directories-based-on-find-output) it completely removes my directory but i need to delete only files or directories contained in it. — Jeeva, May 17 '17 at 13:54
@Jeeva You just changed your spec from deleting all files under the output folder to delete files or directories contained in it. — , May 17 '17 at 14:58

ilkkachu · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-17T14:21:52.173

2

If your find has -mindepth and -delete (at least GNU or BSD):

find . -name output -type d -exec find {} -mindepth 1 -delete \;

edited May 17 '17 at 14:21

answered May 17 '17 at 14:14

ilkkachu

138,973

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered May 17 '17 at 14:00

1

You could use the following ways depending on the version of find you may have.

GNU find:

find . -type f -path '*/output/*' -exec echo rm -f {} \;

POSIX-find

find . -type d -name output -exec sh -c 'find "$1"/. ! -name . -prune -type f -exec rm -f \{\} \;' {} {} \;

answered May 17 '17 at 14:00

find . -type f -path '/output/' -exec echo rm -f {} ; it doesnt work – Jeeva May 17 '17 at 14:06
Where did you make the * vanish around /output/? Look at the command again. – May 17 '17 at 14:09
@RakeshSharma excatly wat don said.sorry for the editing part – Jeeva May 17 '17 at 14:12
Ok then that means your find ain't GNU. So need to use the POSIX version then. – May 17 '17 at 14:12
@RakeshSharma Which part of the first command is not POSIX? – Kusalananda May 17 '17 at 14:17
@Kusalananda the -path option is non-POSIX. – May 17 '17 at 14:55
@RakeshSharma -path is POSIX: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/find.html – Kusalananda May 17 '17 at 14:57
@Kusalananda I need to upgrade my docs. I was referring until now to http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009696699/utilities/find.html :-/ Thanks for pointing that out. – May 17 '17 at 15:00

How to delete the content of all subdirectories named "output"?

2 Answers2