Remove only files recursively, to preserve directory

[Abe Li Kito]

Hi,
Being a newbie in UNIX, I'm wondering what's the easiest way to remove all files recursively in a filesystem but preserve the directories structure. I'm looking at ~800GB of data.

My customer has this weird request to remove all the data, but need the directory structure to remain intact.

Appreciate all the help. Thanks.

[Dennis Handly]

Just use find(1):
$ find root-of-path-to-remove -type f -exec rm -f +

You can pass multiple paths if you need.

[SANTOSH S. MHASKAR]

Hi,

Dennis' solution can be modified as below

$ find root-of-path-to-remove ! -type d -exec rm -f {} +

because as per Dennis' solution it will remove
only files of type file (will not remove directories but will keep device files, named pipes etc.)


-Santosh

[Peter Nikitka]

Hi,

having many files in the directories, it's better to use 'xargs', so no new process needs to be started for the remeval of every single file:

find dir ! -type f | xargs rm

mfG Peter

[TwoProc · Accepted solution]

re: Peters' posting I agree with the theory, but I think there is a typo (the ! makes it not remove files, but everything else).

He's right though, if that 800G is composed of lots and lots of files, then xargs would be a much faster solution.

find -type f | xargs -i rm -f {}

Or better yet, all but directories (which is what you asked for).

find ! -type d | xargs -i rm -f {}

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

As for the use of 'xargs' instead of '-exec' as an argument to 'find', notice that Dennis used the newer "+" termination in lieu of the older ";".

Using '-exec cnd \+' causes bundling (aggregation) of arguments like 'xargs' does; vastly increasing performance. The problem with '-exec cmd \;' is that a new process is spawned for every entity found.

The "+" terminator must be escaped as "+" is special to the shell just like ";". This works on 11.11 and above.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Dennis Handly]

>JRF: The "+" terminator must be escaped as "+" is special to the shell just like ";".

"+" is not special in any "real" shell that I know of. (Though the man page indicates what you said.) At one time "+" was special for context sensitive files for diskless, but that's gone.

[Arturo Galbiati]

Hi,
find dir ! -type d | xargs rm

Rgds,
Art