How to find empty folders on Linux

Posted by Planet Malaysia on October 17, 2008

Tips: How to find an empty folders on Linux box

In order to do some folder maintenance job, you may require to find an empty folder on Linux box. I would like to share tips here:

# find /path -type d -empty

Find empty folder and list
# find /path -type d -empty -exec ls -ld {} \;

Find empty folder and save as temporary file
# find /path -type d -empty -exec ls -ld >> /tmp/savefiles.txt {} \;

Find empty folder and delete
# find /path -type d -empty -exec rm -rf {} \;

Enjoy!

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6 Responses to “How to find empty folders on Linux”

waike on October 23rd, 2008 3:17 pm

you can easily found tons of similar tutorial.
Maverick Prowls on March 1st, 2009 3:33 am

Thanks for this, just what I was looking for
Upendraya on March 16th, 2009 11:11 am

I have posted a complete how-to for the linux newbs at LinuxBuzz.net
felipe1982 on November 3rd, 2009 4:28 pm

You should probably run
[code]
find -type d -empty -exec rmdir '{}' \;
[/code]
rmdir will only remove an empty directory, this adds some assurance (sanity) to the removal process. ‘{}’ will ensure strange directory names are ‘quoted’ and protected from your shell
Antonio on January 19th, 2010 12:36 am

> # find /path -type d -empty -exec rm -rf {} \;

If we do this, we would have to search again for empty folders (those that just got empty by deleting empty folders inside).

Better try:

# find /path -depth -type d -empty -exec rm -r {} \;

“-depth” means “act on contents before the dir (work from the bottom up)”.
kepi on May 31st, 2011 5:40 pm

Even simpler and safer is

# find /path -type d -empty -delete

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