How to remove all files from a directory?

Question

The closest I've gotten is

# rm /path/to/directory/*.*

but that doesn't work for files that don't have an extension...

Answer 1

Linux does not use extensions. It is up to the creator of the file to decide if he wants the name to have an extension. Linux looks at the 1st byte to figure out what kind of file it is dealing with.

To remove everything in a directory use:

rm /path/to/directory/*

You can use the -r option to also remove any directories inside the directory you are removing the content of. Otherwise it will show an error informing you it is not removing the directory.

Answer 2

If you also want to remove all subdirectories and the directory itself, you can use rm -rf /path/to/directory. But always double-check your line before pressing return, rm -rf can cause lots of havock as well, e.g. if you accidentally insert a space after the first slash while having superuser permissions...

Answer 3

• rm -r /path/to/directory/* -f

or

• sudo rm -r /path/to/directory/*

Answer 4

If you want to delete only files in /path/to/directory you can do

find /path/to/directory -type f -print0| xargs -0 rm

or

find /path/to/directory -type f -exec rm {} \;

You can do loads with find, the advantage is you can list what is found without piping it to rm so you can see what will be deleted before you start.

Answer 5

You can cd into the directory and then run the command rm *.* just like in DOS if you remember.