Ubuntu Linux: Delete directory command in Terminal

by Vivek Gite · 4 comments

Q. Can you tell me command to delete a directory in terminal?

A. You need to use the rmdir utility / command. The rmdir utility removes the directory entry specified by each directory argument, provided it is empty. Arguments are processed in the order given. In order to remove both a parent directory and a subdirectory of that parent, the subdirectory must be specified first so the parent directory is empty when rmdir tries to remove it.

Remove / Delete directory called /tmp/foo

Open the terminal. Type the following command:
$ rmdir /tmp/foo

Recursive removal

Remove all files and directories (recursive removal):
$ rm -rf /path/to/directory
$ rm -rf /tmp/foo

Please note that you can also pass -p option to rmdir command. Each directory argument is treated as a pathname of which all components will be removed, if they are empty, starting with the last most component:
$ rmdir -p /tmp/x/y/z

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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }

1 David 01.25.09 at 12:01 am

Thanks for this. However, it doesn’t always work. I found that Thunderbird stores a hidden file in a /home directory and I kept getting a message saying that the folder was not empty. In the end, I used “gksudo nautilus”, renamed the hidden file and then deleted it.

2 PCMaind 07.11.09 at 8:16 am

tnx for this

3 Raffy \n Apurillo 08.13.09 at 5:49 am

It really works thanks

4 LCC 02.05.10 at 7:10 pm

I really doesn’t work. I get the error message saying rmdir: invalid option — ‘r’ when i put in the following:
rmdir -r /sametime-connect-8.0.2/opt/ibm/lotus/sametime/eclipse/plugins/org.apache.lecene_1.4.103.v20060601/META-INF

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