Find and remove sub-directories without error?

Question

I need to find a way to remove sub-directories from within a particular directory without receiving an error if no sub-directories exist. This command will successfully remove sub-directories if they exist

find /path/to/dir/* -maxdepth 1 -type d -exec rm -rf {} \;

But if none exist I will get this error:

find: /path/to/dir/*: No such file or directory

Also, I am using the find instead of just plain rm because there are too many directories for rm to handle and they must be handled individually with find.

Also I noticed that find /path/to/dir/ -maxdepth 1 -type d -exec rm -rf {} \; with no wildcard actually removes the dir directory as well.

Answer 1

You can use the -mindepth parameter from find, to prevent it from matching . in the target directory. This should resolve your issues.

find /path/to/dir/ -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d -exec rm -rf {} +