How do I recursively remove subdirectories and files, but not the first parent directory?

Solution 1:

The previous answer is almost correct. However, you shouldn't quote the shell glob characters if you want them to work. So, this is the command you're looking for:

rm -rf "/target/directory with spaces/"*

Note that the * is outside of the double quotes. This form would also work:

rm -rf /target/directory\ with\ spaces/*

If you have the * in quotes as shown above, then it will only attempt to remove the single file literally named * inside the target directory.

Solution 2:

Three more options.

1. Use find with -mindepth 1 and -delete:

   −mindepth levels
   Do not apply any tests or actions at levels less than levels (a non‐negative integer).
   −mindepth 1 means process all files except the command line arguments.

   -delete
   Delete files; true if removal succeeded. If the removal failed, an error message is issued. If −delete fails, find’s exit status will be nonzero (when it eventually exits). Use of −delete automatically turns on the −depth option.
   Test carefully with the -depth option before using this option.

   # optimal?
   # -xdev      don't follow links to other filesystems
   find '/target/dir with spaces/' -xdev -mindepth 1 -delete
   
   # Sergey's version
   # -xdev      don't follow links to other filesystems
   # -depth    process depth-first not breadth-first
   find '/target/dir with spaces/' -xdev -depth -mindepth1 -exec rm -rf {} \;
   

2. Use find, but with files, not directories. This avoids the need to rm -rf:

    # delete all the files;
    find '/target/dir with spaces/' -type f -exec rm {} \;

    # then get all the dirs but parent
    find '/target/dir with spaces/' -mindepth 1 -depth -type d -exec rmdir {} \;

    # near-equivalent, slightly easier for new users to remember
    find '/target/dir with spaces/' -type f -print0 | xargs -0 rm
    find '/target/dir with spaces/' -mindepth 1 -depth -type d -print0 | xargs -0 rmdir

3. Go ahead and remove the parent directory, but recreate it. You could create a bash function to do this with one command; here's a simple one-liner:

    rm -rf '/target/dir with spaces' ; mkdir '/target/dir with spaces'

Solution 3:

How about

rm -rf /target/directory\ path/*

If there may be files starting with . in the target directory.

rm -rf "/target/directory path/*" "/target/directory path/.??*"

This second will match everything starting with a ., except . and .. It will fail on names like .a, but that isn't very common. It could be tweaked if necessary to cover all of the cases.

Solution 4:

find /target/directory/ -xdev -depth -mindepth 1 -exec rm -Rf {} \;