Delete recursively files in a folder and in child folder

Question

I want to delete all files contained in a folder and his subfolder recursively without deleteing folders.

For example I have this structure :

MainFolder
│   Somefile6
│   Somefile7
│ 
└───child1
│   |   Somefile
│   |   Somefile2
│   │   
│   └───child2  
│       │   Somefile3
│       │   Somefile4
│       │
│       └───child3
│           │   Somefile5

After running a bash script (what I tried) :

#!/bin/bash
shopt -s nullglob dotglob # Include hidden file
dir=(/root/some/path/*)
if [ ${#dir[@]} -gt 0 ]; then
    for file in "$dir"
    do
        echo "Doing some custom action before deleting..."
        echo "Deleting $file"
        rm "$file"
        sleep 1
    done
else
    echo "The folder is empty";
fi

What I expect to obtain

MainFolder
│ 
└───child1
│   │   
│   └───child2  
│       │
│       └───child3
│           │

Problem:

It's just deleting the files Somefile6 and Somefile7

Because that's what you told it to do. `for file in "$dir"`. — Robert Harvey, Feb 08 '19 at 15:32
How can I parse all folders? @Robert the duplicate answer you marked doesn't answer my question — executable, Feb 08 '19 at 15:33

tuxtimo · Accepted Answer · 2019-02-08T15:37:04.197

2

You can use find to look for all files and let it delete those:

find -type f -delete

-type f: tells find to only yield files
-delete: tells find to delete all the found items

If you don't want to delete the files you can use -exec and do what ever you want with the files find yields.

edited Feb 08 '19 at 15:37

answered Feb 08 '19 at 15:34

tuxtimo

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I know but I need to use it in a recursive way, because I'm going to do some action before deleting – executable Feb 08 '19 at 15:35
If you want to do something else just use `-exec` instead of `-delete`. I've updated the post. – tuxtimo Feb 08 '19 at 15:37
Can I use condition in the exec ? – executable Feb 08 '19 at 15:38
If the code you want to execute is more complex - just pass a script. – tuxtimo Feb 08 '19 at 15:39
How can I execute a custom function with `-exec` ? – executable Feb 08 '19 at 15:44
1

`export -f somefunc; find . -exec bash -c 'somefunc "$0"' {} \` Here it'll execute `somefunc` which you need to define in our script. – tuxtimo Feb 08 '19 at 15:47

Delete recursively files in a folder and in child folder

1 Answers1