To delete the directories using find command

Varun K M

7/25/24, 6:23 AM

I am using the Linux command to delete the directories from my server.

find . ! -name . -type d -mtime +30 -print -delete

But the directories are not deleting. Attached the image , please refer. I am using prune depth rm -rf folders are deleting. But there is a performance / time taking process. But instead of that can i use the -delete command right.

240

1 + 5

command-line

find

execute-command

20.04

Varun K M

7/25/24, 6:31 AM

@guiverc -- I have corrected my tags. Without rm -rf , cant we use -delete command ?

karel

7/25/24, 6:53 AM

Does this answer your question? [Find folders and delete contents](https://askubuntu.com/questions/1119873/find-folders-and-delete-contents)

Raffa

7/25/24, 7:22 AM

Your directories appear to not be empty ... `find`'s action `-delete` only deletes empty directories ... You can use e.g. `-exec rm -r {} +` instead of `-delete` to force deleting non-empty directories with minimal performance penalty because of `+` to process multiple arguments at once instead of `\;`... Be careful though.

Varun K M

7/25/24, 8:17 AM

@Raffa , so -delete is used only to delete empty directories. It wont help to delete the big size directories.

Raffa

7/25/24, 8:50 AM

@VarunKM Yes, it acts on directories like `rmdir` and only removes empty directories ... Also `-mtime +30` will exclude even empty directories modified less than 30 days.

Score:4

Ubuntu

Raffa

7/25/24, 9:05 AM

find's action -delete will act on directories similar to rmdir i.e. will only remove empty directories and error otherwise ... So you might want to use instead something like:

find . ! -name . -type d -mtime +30 -print -exec rm -r {} + -depth

to delete non-empty(in addition to empty) directories recursively.

+ 1

Varun K M

7/25/24, 12:09 PM

Thanks for your response. Actually i am using this command ,previously. But only problem is with this command it taking much time to delete the records. need to improvise the command in the sense of server performance and quicker. Thats why i thought of delete command, but i understood it is used for only empty directories. Note: I am deleting around some millions of record and storage in Giga bytes.

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