rm -rf all files and all hidden files without . & .. error

Question

rm -rf /some/path/* deletes all non-hidden files in that dir (and subdirs).

rm -rf /some/path/.* deletes all hidden files in that dir (but not subdirs) and also gives the following error/warning:

rm: cannot remove directory: `/some/dir/.'
rm: cannot remove directory: `/some/dir/..'

What is the proper way to remove all hidden and non-hidden files and folders recursively in a target directory without receiving the warning/error about . and ..?

Answer 1

* matches all non-dot-files, .[!.]* matches all dot files except . and files whose name begins with .., and ..?* matches all dot-dot files except ... Together they match all files other than . and ... If any of these three patterns matches nothing, it expands to itself; rm -f doesn't care about non-existent arguments, so this doesn't matter.

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

You can also use find. This is more complex but has the advantage of working even if there are so many files that the wildcards above would expand beyond your system's command line length limit.

find . -name . -o -prune -exec rm -rf -- {} +

You may find it clearer to remove and recreate the directory. This has the advantage (or downside, as the case may be) of resulting in an empty directory even if another program is concurrently creating files in the original directory.

Answer 2

You could always send error messages to /dev/null

rm -rf /some/path/.* 2> /dev/null

You could also just

rm -rf /some/path/
mkdir /some/path/

...then you won't have to bother with hidden files in the first place.

Answer 3

Just realised this is the most convenient way in most Linux distros:

ls -A1 | xargs rm -rf

where

-A = list everything except . and ..

-1 = put every item in one line

Answer 4

Either change the dotglob option of your shell and use *, or use something like find.

find somedir -mindepth 1 -delete

Answer 5

This should work just like @Gilles answer but more compact:

rm -rf {,.[!.],..?}*

or

rm -rf dir/to/files/{,.[!.],..?}*

should also add an if for usage in scripts just to be safe:

if [ -d "$DIR" ]; then
    rm -rf ${DIR}/{,.[!.],..?}*
fi

Answer 6

I suggest you experiment with

Turn-ON dots (hidden files)

• set dotglob

  shopt -s dotglob

Turn-OFF dots

• unset dotglob

  shopt -u dotglob

This method worked exactly as I wished for a copy command that was missing the hidden directories.

    shopt -s    dotglob
    cp    -rvn  ./$from/*  ./$too/
    shopt -u    dotglob

So I did a remove (delete), and oops ...

    shopt -s    dotglob
    rm -fr ../message_splitter--044a/*
    shopt -u    dotglob

... that works too!

It occurs to me that you dear reader can't see the message_splitter directory. Any way it has a .svn folder that needs to be removed, and copied Into.

From man page ...

dotglob If set, bash includes filenames beginning with a `.' in the results of pathname expansion.

references:

• recursively cp all directories, files and hidden files (linuxquestions.org, accessed: 2018-May-09)

Answer 7

What is the proper way to remove all hidden and non-hidden files and folders recursively in a target directory without receiving the warning/error about . and ..?

Assuming the directory in question is ./dir, then

rm -rf ./dir

would remove all files in ./dir, including hidden files and directories, recursively, and including the ./dir directory itself.

If you do not want to delete the directory itself, then you may just recreate it afterwards, or use

find ./dir -mindepth 1 -delete

or if you find does not support -delete,

find ./dir -mindepth 1 -depth -exec rm -rf {} ';'

Using -mindepth 1 allows you to keep the top-level directory ./dir.

Answer 8

Find is your friend.

find ! -name '.' ! -name '..' -delete

% find ! -name '.' ! -name '..'
./test
./test4
./test4/.test6
./test3
./.test5
./test2
% find ! -name '.' ! -name '..' -delete    
% find ! -name '.' ! -name '..'     
%             

If you wish to use recursively search something other your current directory ($PWD), then add a path right after the find command; e.g., find /path ! -name '.' ! -name '..' -delete. If you only want to descend n number of directories, then use the -maxdepth n option right after the /path parameter.

The above command was tested on an Ubuntu 13.04 system. Will likely work on other, modern linux systems.

Answer 9

Why nobody mentions:

rm -rf * .*

Answer 10

What about using find with both -maxdepth and -mindepth? This can be also run outside the directory you want to clear.

find target/ -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -exec rm -fr -- {} +;

Here's a complete example:

mkdir -p target/{plain{0..3},.hidden{0..3}}; 
touch target/{plain{0..3},.hidden{0..3}} target/{plain{0..3},.hidden{0..3}}/{plain{0..3},.hidden{0..3}};
tree -a;
find target/ -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -exec rm -fr -- {} +;
tree -a;

Answer 11

Shorter version

rm -r * .*

rm: remove

-r: recursively

*: all directories

.*: all hidden directories ( ex: .git, .gitignore )

use an optional force flag ( --force or -f ). Check the usage here.

rm -rf * .*

Note: ( for zsh users )
The above command doesn't work partially i.e If it can't find files/ directories matching any of * or .* the other one won't execute.

You can fix this using the command

setopt no_nomatch

zsh commands are scoped to a session(/tab). ( if you open a new session you will still face the issue ).

add this line to .zshrc file to apply for all sessions.

ps: restart iterm after making changes to .zshrc