delete all empty directories using xargs

kargig — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 17:50:41 +0000

I was trying to figure out one 1-liner to delete all empty directories in a tree.
The following should do it’s job:
%find -type d -empty | xargs rm -rvf

BUT! While this works for directories with “regular” filenames, it doesn’t work when there are special characters inside the filename. Consider this for example:

%ls -1 test 1 test2 test _ 3 %find -type d -empty ./test 1 ./test2 ./test _ 3 %find -type d -empty | xargs rm -rvf removed directory: `./test2' %find -type d -empty ./test 1 ./test _ 3

Only directory “test2″ was deleted. To delete the rest of the directories when they contain “special” characters like whitespace and quotes one needs to modify the command like this:

%find -type d -empty -print0 | xargs -0 rm -rvf removed directory: `./test 1' removed directory: `./test _ 3 '

Into.the.Void. » xargs

delete all empty directories using xargs