CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxbashshell
msincla01
msincla01

Reputation: 11

Bash help deleting nested directories

Ok this may sound bizarre but I have a directory /PDB/ that I want to scan for all contained directories. All of these directories contain several files and a subdirectory name /pockets/ that may or may not be empty. I want to delete every parent directory and all its contents that contains an empty /pockets/ subdirectory. So far I have this code:

cd /PDB/
for D in */
do
   find -maxdepth 1 -type d -empty -exec rm -r $D +
done

This does not currently execute, giving the error find: missing argument to '-exec'

Earlier I was using {} instead of $D but that only deleted the empty subdirectory.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 54

Answers (1)

Charles Duffy
Charles Duffy

Reputation: 295288

I wouldn't use find here at all. Consider:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
#              ^^^^ - NOT /bin/sh; using bash-only features here

shopt -s nullglob           # if no matches exist, expand to an empty list
for d in /PDB/*; do         # iterate over subdirectories
  set -- "$d"/pockets/*     # set argument list to contents of pockets/ subdirectory
  (( "$#" )) && continue      # if the glob matched anything, we aren't empty
  rm -rf -- "${d%/pockets/}"  # if we *are* empty, delete the parent directory
done

...or, if you really want to use find:

find /PDB -type d -name pockets -empty -exec bash -c '
  for arg; do
    rm -rf -- "${arg%/*}"
  done
' _ {} +

Upvotes: 4

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