Delete / Remove a Directory Linux Command

Q. I am new to Linux and command line. How do I delete or remove a directory?

A. Use rmdir command. This command remove the DIRECTORY(ies), if they are empty. For example, type the following command to remove /tmp/docs directory:

$ rmdir /tmp/docs
If directory is not empty you will get an error:
$ rmdir letters
Output:

rmdir: letters: Directory not empty

You can change directory to find out files:
$ cd letters
$ ls

Linux remove entire directory

To remove all directories and subdirectories use rm command. For example remove letters and all subdirectories and files inside this directory, type the following command:
$ rm -rf letters/

For example if you want to remove all empty directories from /tmp directory, type the command:

$ cd /tmp
$ cleanlinks

Please note that cleanlinks command is part of XFree86 project. Another method is to use combination of shell commands in script:

#/bin/bash
DIR=”$1″
[ -d $DIR ] && [ $(ls -l $DIR | wc -l) -eq 1 ] && rmdir $DIR || :

Save and execute a script:

$ script.sh dir1

You can also try out tmpreaper command which recursively searches for and removes files and empty directories which haven’t been accessed for a given number of seconds. Normally, it’s used to clean up directories which are used for temporary holding space, such as “/tmp”. Syntax is as follows:
tmpreaper TIME-FORMAT DIRS

Where,

• TIME-FORMAT : Defines the age threshold for removing files. The TIME-FORMAT should be a number, defaulting to hours, optionally suffixed by one character: d for days, h for hours, m for minutes, or s for seconds.
• DIRS : Directory name for example /tmp

For example, remove all files accessed 24h before:

# tmpreaper 24h /tmp

Please note that tmpreaper command is not installed by default you may need to install it using apt-get or rpm command.