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Accepted
Jamie Hutber
Asked: 2019-10-31 07:14:18 +0800 CST

Remove folder if it has another folder with the same started numbers

  • 772

I have some folders that have been created in error. I would like remove these folders.

¬ 636
¬ 636.empty
¬ 637
¬ 638.empty
¬ 639
¬ 639.empty

In this situation I would like to remove 636.empty and leave the remaining none empty folder.

After I have ran the terminal command I would like all folders that a sister folder to be removed.

¬ 636
¬ 637
¬ 638.empty
¬ 639

Removed folders would be:

¬ 636.empty
¬ 639.empty

I have some 25,000 folders maybe 1000 of these are duplicates with the empty folder

command-line directory rm

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Loop through all directories named *empty and check if same directory without .empty exists and delete if true:

    for d in *.empty; do
    [ -d "$d" ] && [ -d "${d%.empty}" ] && rmdir "$d"
done

    Replace rmdir with rm -rf if the directory is not empty despite its name ;-)

    A find alternative:

    find -maxdepth 1 -type d -name '*.empty' \
  -exec sh -c '[ -d "${1%.empty}" ]' find-sh {} \; \
  -delete

    Replace -delete with -exec rm -rf {} \; if the directory is not empty.

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