How do I delete everything in a directory?

Question

I'm sorry for asking such a basic question:

How do I delete everything in a directory, including hidden files and directories?

Right now, I use the following:

rm -rf *
rm -rf .*

Answer 1

The best answer is: Don't do that. Recursively remove the directory itself, then recreate it. It's more reliable and easier for other people to understand what you're trying to do. When you re-create the directory it may have a different owner, group and permissions. If those are important be careful.

Answer 2

rm -rf -- * .[!.]* ..?*

Each of the three pattern expands to itself if it matches nothing, but that's not a problem here since we want to match everything and rm -f ignored nonexistent arguments.

Note that .* would match ...

Answer 3

Simple and straight forward:

find -delete 

Includes directories and hidden files. At least gnu-find knows -delete, your find may differ.

Answer 4

if you are in the directory:

cd .. && rm -rf dir && mkdir dir && cd dir

otherwise:

rm -rf /path/to/dir && mkdir /path/to/dir

Answer 5

How about using find. I think this is generally a good choice, when you have to dig through sub-directories.

find . -type f -exec rm {} \;

Answer 6

Oh my Zsh

rm -rf (.|)*

Again, this is for Zsh only.

Answer 7

Try rm -rf *?*. This will delete normal and hidden files.