dear all,

is there such a command? of course rmdir only removes non empty directory...

thanks,

aj.

try " rm -R <dirname> "

egag

1 members found this post helpful.

you could try "rm -rf directoryname". Use it with care, because any mistakes and you could hose your system (I have done it before and it wasn't a pleasant experience).

1 members found this post helpful.

yeah....first fill in the dir-name, then use arrows to go back and fill in -rf or -Rf.

egag

thank you guys this was exactly what i was looking for

cheers,

aj.

wrong thread!

Mark the thread as solved - see top of page - and mark the posts you found most useful - see bottom right corner of each post.

Despite having almost 20 years of Unix experience, I still quiver a bit when deleting large quantities of files inside complex directory structures. I've got to the point where I rather fire up Midnight Commander and do it the easy way. Might take a bit longer, but it's very clear as to exactly what's going to get deleted.

1 members found this post helpful.

I too use MC - it's my user interface. I just use rm for deleting many files within a directory when I can take advantage of globbing.

I suppose the O.P. could also have invented a time machine to carry out these functions that were not around at the time the thread was solved, 5/10/05.

It was nice to see the user name egag again, he helped me a great deal when I was a newbie.

samac

Oh dear - I've just checked out the dates now that you pointed it out - all this was started because someone posted on the wrong thread and revived an old one.

Yes, you're right it would have been difficult to mark it as solved in 2005.

Nevertheless, there are still loads of new threads which are left as still open and I am surprised by the profuse thanks given by OP's but they forget to tag the individual posts which they found helpful.

As they say, you can lead a horse to water but you can't force it to drink.

Anyway - bash threads never die!