Question

How to remove a directory that contains other files or directories

Asked by: Sma11T0wnITGuy

Hello folks,

Newb question here.  I'm trying to clean up some stuff on an OpenBSD 4.1 build.  I've checked the man pages for rmdir, and this is all it contains:

# man rmdir
RMDIR(1)                   OpenBSD Reference Manual                   RMDIR(1)

NAME
     rmdir - remove directories

SYNOPSIS
     rmdir [-p] directory [...]

DESCRIPTION
     The rmdir utility removes the directory entry specified by each directory
     argument, provided it is empty.

     Arguments are processed in the order given.  In order to remove both a
     parent directory and a subdirectory of that parent, the subdirectory must
     be specified first so the parent directory is empty when rmdir tries to
     remove it.

     The options are as follows:

     -p      Each directory argument is treated as a pathname of which all
             components will be removed, if they are empty, starting with the
             last most component.  (See rm(1) for fully non-discriminant re-
             cursive removal.)

     The rmdir utility exits with one of the following values:

     0       Each directory argument referred to an empty directory and was
             removed successfully.

     >0      An error occurred.

EXAMPLES
     $ rmdir foobar

     Remove the directory foobar if it is empty.

     $ rmdir -p cow/horse/monkey

     Remove all directories up to and including cow, stopping at the first
     non-empty directory (if any).

SEE ALSO
     rm(1), rmdir(2)

STANDARDS
     The rmdir utility is expected to be IEEE Std 1003.2 (``POSIX.2'') compat-
     ible.

HISTORY
     A rmdir command appeared in Version 1 AT&T UNIX.

OpenBSD 4.1                      May 31, 1993                                1
#

I tried rmdir -p, then the directory name, but still get the message Directory not empty:

# rmdir -p src
rmdir: src: Directory not empty
#

The src directory contains over 20 folders.  I really don't want to empty each one individually.

Am I using rmdir wrong, or is there another command to clean up directories that contain files?

Any help is much appreciated.

Ted

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Asked On
2007-11-02 at 11:49:15ID22935619
Tags

directory

,

remove

,

how

,

empty

Topic

OpenBSD

Participating Experts
1
Points
125
Comments
4

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Answers

 

by: gheistPosted on 2007-11-02 at 14:36:15ID: 20204665

rm -rfi ../usr/obj/*

Remove i for no questions asked

What exactly is to be cleaned?

 

by: Sma11T0wnITGuyPosted on 2007-11-09 at 11:14:53ID: 20252146

I was trying to remove a directory called src, but it had other files and directories in it.

 

by: gheistPosted on 2007-11-10 at 08:50:56ID: 20256252

Is there any reason to do so? It is essential when you wish to install security patches.
Command is "rm -rf src"

 

by: Sma11T0wnITGuyPosted on 2007-11-13 at 07:31:04ID: 20272141

This wasn't the main src directory.  It was added into a directory where I unpacked a tar ball, but I ran out of disk space so I wanted to delete it and start over.

I moved it to a directory with more space.

Very good info to know for the future though.  Thanks!

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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