Re: slight 'rm --help' confusion

[James Youngman]

On Thu, Apr 07, 2005 at 08:45:58PM +0100, Philip Rowlands wrote:

> rmdir can still be useful as a less-dangerous alternative to rm -r;
> rmdir * will only wipe empty directories, although I was overjoyed when
> I found this worked:
> 
> $ find dirname -depth -type d -empty -exec rmdir -v -- '{}' ';'

Recent versions of findutils also allow you to do it like this:

$ find dirname -type d -delete    # -delete implies -depth

or like this:

$ find dirname -depth -type d -empty -execdir rmdir '{}' '+'

(GNU find -execdir subsitutes ./filename for {} here, so you get
"rmdir ./-rf" rather than "rmdir -rf").

Regards,
James.