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Delete empty directories recursively

destructiveFilesystemalle
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user@server
find /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs -mindepth 1 -type d -empty -print -delete

Deletes every empty directory below the path, while -mindepth 1 keeps the starting path itself. Since -delete works from the inside out, folders that only contained empty subfolders are removed too. Files are not touched.

Note: Applications sometimes expect empty folders (upload, cache or lock directories) and fail without them. Check the list with find ... -type d -empty first.

Also searched as

  • delete empty directories linux
  • remove empty folders recursively
  • clean up empty subdirectories

Related one-liners

All in Filesystem

Delete files older than X days

$find /var/backups/example.com -type f -name '*.tar.gz' -mtime +30 -print -delete
destructiveFilesystem

Recursively delete all files with a given name

$find /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs -type f -name 'error_log' -print -delete
destructiveFilesystem

Find duplicate files by checksum

$find /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs/wp-content/uploads -type f -size +0 -exec md5sum {} + | sort | uniq -w32 --all-repeated=separate
harmlessFilesystem

Find empty directories

$find /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs -mindepth 1 -type d -empty
harmlessFilesystem

Find files older than X days

$find /var/www/vhosts/example.com -type f -mtime +30 -printf '%TY-%Tm-%Td %p\n' | sort | head -100
harmlessFilesystem

Find the largest files in a directory

$find /var/www/vhosts -type f -size +500M -exec ls -lh {} + 2>/dev/null | sort -k5 -rh | head -20
harmlessFilesystem

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