How to remove folders with a certain name

linux unix rm
Joe picture Joe · Oct 23, 2012 · Viewed 105.8k times · Source

In Linux, how do I remove folders with a certain name which are nested deep in a folder hierarchy?

The following paths are under a folder and I would like to remove all folders named a. 

1/2/3/a
1/2/3/b
10/20/30/a
10/20/30/b
100/200/300/a
100/200/300/b

What Linux command should I use from the parent folder?

Answer

pistache picture pistache · Oct 23, 2012

If the target directory is empty, use find, filter with only directories, filter by name, execute rmdir:

find . -type d -name a -exec rmdir {} \;

If you want to recursively delete its contents, replace -exec rmdir {} \; with -delete or -prune -exec rm -rf {} \;. Other answers include details about these versions, credit them too.

Related questions

Can't remove a directory in Unix

I've got a seemingly un-deletable directory in Unix that contains some hidden files with names that start with .panfs. I'm unable to delete it using either of these commands: rm -R <dir> rm -Rf <dir> Does …

Read More
Looping through the content of a file in Bash

How do I iterate through each line of a text file with Bash? With this script: echo "Start!" for p in (peptides.txt) do echo "${p}" done I get this output on the screen: Start! ./runPep.sh: line 3: syntax error …

Read More
How to permanently set $PATH on Linux/Unix?

I'm trying to add a directory to my path so it will always be in my Linux path. I've tried: export PATH=$PATH:/path/to/dir This works, however each time I exit the terminal and start a new terminal …

Read More