bash - remove all directories (and contents) but not files in pwd

Question

I'd like to remove all directories from the pwd but leave the files in the pwd alone. If the content of my pwd is:

mydir1
mydir2
myfile1
myfile2

then I'd like to be left with just

myfile1
myfile2

I assume that I need to use rm -r -i

Am I correct?

score 29 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 07 '14 at 15:42

29

I found this one somewhere:

rm -r */

Seems the easiest way to go. With your example, you would have to confirm each case, if you have 5 files it's OK, but with bigger file structures an interactive mode is't the way to go... Just as a suggestion, if it's important information, make a backup...

answered Feb 07 '14 at 15:42

Martin

431
1
3
6

2

That will also follow symbolic links, which very probably isn't desired here. – JdeBP Feb 07 '14 at 16:43

score 16 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 03 '19 at 15:41

No that would give you "missing operand" since you didn't specify anything. Putting a * would prompt also for files.

I'd give a try to:

find -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d -exec rm -r {} \;

The mindepth 1 will exclude . from the results, the maxdepth 1 will exclude trying to do under the directories that will anyway get deleted (therefore creating a warning). But in practice you could leave them both out if you agree to have a few "innocent" warnings.

score 14 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 08 '14 at 16:15

14

Use

rm -rf ./*/

That avoids interactive mode an deletes only directories in your local directory.

answered Feb 08 '14 at 16:15

WeSee

336
2
7

As [JdeBP pointed out](https://superuser.com/q/713741/150988#comment912645_713746) on [Martin's very similar answer](https://superuser.com/q/713741/150988#713746), if the current (top-level) directory contains symbolic links to other directories, they will also be deleted (even if they aren't in or subordinate to the current directory). – Scott - Слава Україні Dec 21 '18 at 07:07

score 4 · Answer 4 · answered Feb 07 '14 at 15:45

4

Something like this should work:

find /path -type d -exec rm -rf '{}' \;

-type d looks for only directories

answered Feb 07 '14 at 15:45

Matthew Williams

4,314
12
26
38

score -1 · Answer 5 · answered Dec 21 '18 at 02:09

you can also try in this way to delete only all folders not files from any location in linux.

    #delete only all dir and don't touch files
    #!/bin/bash
    for dir in `ls -l | grep ^d | awk '{print $9}'`
    do
    echo "going to delete $dir " `rm -rf $dir`
    done
    ls

bash - remove all directories (and contents) but not files in pwd

5 Answers5