Delete / Remove a Directory Linux Command

by nixCraft on June 8, 2006 · 81 comments· last updated at April 26, 2011

I am new to Linux and command line. How do I delete or remove a directory?

Use the rmdir command. This command remove the DIRECTORY(ies), if they are empty. Open a command-line terminal (select Applications > Accessories > Terminal), and then type the following command to remove a directory called /tmp/docs:

 
rmdir /tmp/docs

If a directory is not empty you will get an error:
$ rmdir letters
Output:

rmdir: letters: Directory not empty

You can cd to the directory to find out files:
$ cd letters $ ls

Linux Remove Entire Directory Command

To remove all directories and subdirectories use rm command. For example remove letters and all subdirectories and files inside this directory, type the following command (warning all files including subdirectories will be deleted permanently):
$ rm -rf letters/

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{ 81 comments… read them below or add one }

1 yogi April 28, 2008 at 3:24 am

very good
i give five star

2 Sourav August 2, 2012 at 7:36 am

Getting error as : Permission denied

3 Chris Lentz August 10, 2012 at 1:53 pm: Try running with ‘sudo’ command in front of it.
Reply

4 vishwa May 20, 2008 at 10:25 am

i tried it , very good can delete a large directory also.

i give 5 stars

5 Kshitiz Singh April 14, 2012 at 4:36 am

I give it a 3 star. There has to be a more flexible way to do it. Removing files permanently is not a good option for linux this is a windows kind of rubbish thing

6 Mark October 7, 2012 at 6:03 pm: It’s not exactly permanent in Windows either. In fact, the “undelete” command has been available for quite some time… the Recycle Bin/Trash makes it possible to restore in both operating systems (from the GUI of course). I’m not exactly glorifying M$ but they aren’t exactly the cesspool of operating systems… LOL they’re not the best either but if M$ Windows were FREE and/or Open it may change some opinions.
Reply

7 Yury October 31, 2008 at 11:05 am

thank you

8 Arif November 6, 2008 at 5:06 am

Very effective

9 suveetha November 28, 2008 at 11:45 am

THANKS:)

10 manjunath December 8, 2008 at 5:10 pm

thanks a lot

11 Ed December 10, 2008 at 9:27 am

rm: cannot remove `unixODBC//exe/.libs/odbcinst’: Permission denied

I got loads of these messages, must I go through each file and change their permissions?

12 Vivek Gite December 10, 2008 at 9:34 am

Run rm as root. Otherwise use chmod -R to change permission.

13 Ed December 10, 2008 at 9:47 am

thanks for the reply Vivek

14 krishna February 7, 2009 at 10:32 am

thanks yaar really works

15 raja February 10, 2009 at 12:33 pm

Thanks for remove with sub directory cmd is rm -rf

16 ralph February 12, 2009 at 4:42 pm

Awesome! great!

17 ghan March 4, 2009 at 1:26 am

Save my time. Very useful. Thanks a lot!

18 nguyen ngoc thanh March 19, 2009 at 2:18 am

very good!

19 hari March 25, 2009 at 3:33 pm

Thanks ! its very useful.

20 phani March 30, 2009 at 9:13 am

thaks..a lot. i know the differnce between rmdir and rm -rf.

21 Nandlal Sahu April 1, 2009 at 10:21 am

Excellent
i give 5 star

22 ganesh April 13, 2009 at 5:19 am

its very effective

23 Timon April 14, 2009 at 7:49 pm

Thank you is very usefull post :)

24 Jordan May 8, 2009 at 4:15 am

Thank u very much it works properly

25 Sukhdeep Singh July 14, 2009 at 12:51 pm

Thank You
Very very useful post sir

26 anad July 15, 2009 at 4:40 pm

worked for me

27 pravin August 7, 2009 at 6:08 am

Hello all
i am having some trouble in deleting a directory in ubuntu. actually my directory’s ownership changes to ?? ?? also file size is also changed to ?? only name is there and all things changes to ?? like this,
ls: cannot access pg_database: No such file or directory
total 0
-????????? ? ? ? ? ? pg_database
I need your suggestions

Thanks in advance !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

28 Max August 12, 2009 at 12:19 pm

very useful info ! Thanks

29 Draco August 14, 2009 at 11:11 pm

Thanks a lot! I needed it for work and didn’t want to take chance to mess sth up.

30 Juan Guillermo August 31, 2009 at 5:11 am

-r Stands for Recursive and -f Stands for Force

Take care with the effect when using ‘-rf’ flags

31 amit September 1, 2009 at 5:39 pm

thanks……….

32 traverlawre October 19, 2009 at 2:52 am

In Linux correct command would be rm -rf /letters/
The slash before the directory name is required or else it will not be seen as a directory and you will get an error. Also, consider using sudo such as:
sudo rm -rf /letters/ when permissions conflict.

33 Sujan November 24, 2009 at 5:08 am

Thanks traverlawre,
‘sudo’ did it. Without ‘sudo’ I had permission denied for many files that I wanted to remove.

34 Shady December 3, 2009 at 1:43 pm

excellent article

35 siropio December 7, 2009 at 2:28 pm

worked! thanks

36 d134 December 12, 2009 at 8:45 pm

thanx a lot

37 lalish February 3, 2010 at 5:56 am

its niceeeeee

38 Rajive March 10, 2010 at 8:01 am

Thanks a lot bro

Helped me a lot.

39 Tarun April 15, 2010 at 9:35 am

how to remove the directory with spaces.
rm -rf “file name”
it dosnt works.

40 kaptenvu June 23, 2010 at 6:44 am

try this :
rm -rf file\ name\ with\ spaces

41 Shabbir Ahmed June 24, 2010 at 9:53 am

Hello!
I am installing oracle10 database on linux (rh4em) plz can i have the easiest steps taht first time i can understand.

42 Guru July 29, 2010 at 1:00 pm

Is any linux/unix command to delete one folder among 5 folders inside directory?
Thanks with anticipation

43 Balaraju/Aniruddh Divy Tej August 21, 2010 at 9:59 am

information is most use full thanks for your help
I appreciate your great help

44 Esonz August 23, 2010 at 5:27 am

Great! taynk yow!

45 Frederik August 26, 2010 at 12:04 pm

Thanx seems to be very useful however I’m using Slax to access a damaged NTFS drive and am having trouble deleting files from that drive, i can read the files fine however i can’t change permissions for any of the files or folders and the drive is mounted with the ntfs -3g command so it should be editable. i’ve tried the chmod command without luck. any ideas?

Thanks a ton in advance…

46 random September 25, 2010 at 4:51 pm

Thanks a lot !!! very effective

47 dana October 30, 2010 at 1:48 am

You have been bailing me out countless of times. Thanks!
:D

48 Miguel Costa November 9, 2010 at 10:56 am

:) tks a lot
You really helped me ;)

49 sandeep choudhary November 10, 2010 at 4:33 pm: i m unsetisfide
Reply

50 lara December 2, 2010 at 3:47 am

thanks 4 the nice idea about that!.. hehe

51 nagesh December 19, 2010 at 8:42 am

cool command…. simply works great,thanks

52 Rakesh January 4, 2011 at 5:51 am

Thank you

53 Pankaj January 27, 2011 at 5:36 am

Thanks…! it helps

54 Sivasangkari February 9, 2011 at 8:27 am

Thanks a lot…it’s very helpful…

55 Nisha March 31, 2011 at 4:14 am

Thanks a lot..

56 Duncan Murimi April 26, 2011 at 12:17 pm

Very useful. for permission denied folders add sudo in front.

57 Marco May 18, 2011 at 10:26 am

thanks! save me some time as im new to linux!

58 Terryble September 8, 2011 at 1:25 pm

rm -rf

will remove it without any answer needed.

rm -r without (-f for force) will request you a reply to remove each files.
exemple:
rm -r ntop-4.1.0
rm: descend into directory `ntop-4.1.0′? yes
rm: remove regular file `ntop-4.1.0/ntop_win32.h’?

59 Rahinur Rahaman September 14, 2011 at 3:20 am

Thanks!

It works for me

60 Nitin October 26, 2011 at 2:04 am

Thanks :)

61 Raghavendra November 16, 2011 at 7:34 am

Please guide me If i have mutipal folders in same dir.
like
ls -x
a
b
c
d
f
Now I want delete ..a c d dir.How can I delete in singal command

62 syamkumar December 21, 2011 at 6:03 am: Thanks its very useful.
Reply

63 harga laptop January 23, 2012 at 10:21 am

What’s the command to find all files with extension tmp (ex: *.tmp) and then delete them automatically? Thanks

64 n0de February 16, 2012 at 9:36 pm

very nice, worked like a charm keep up the good work ;)

65 Tirumal February 18, 2012 at 12:24 pm

Thanks for info…! It was really helpful

66 Shashank April 3, 2012 at 3:19 pm

thank a lot it’s working excellently

67 khalid April 26, 2012 at 10:19 pm

thanks a lot save my time

68 Yousefzad May 16, 2012 at 4:39 am

Thank you very Much for the information, i found it so useful.

thanks,

69 Jacob July 3, 2012 at 1:29 pm

Is there a way to delete like every directory named a special name if so I have 19 directorys with the same name on my dedicated debian server and I want to delete all of them then it just searches for the names and deletes them?

70 Alireza July 13, 2012 at 12:35 pm

Thank you.

71 Onneile August 27, 2012 at 5:55 pm

Thanks, it worked for me

72 Syed Ahmed September 4, 2012 at 4:24 am

I have problem of Koha perl comiling…. when I put the command…. following …

sudo perl Makefile.PL
Can’t locate ZOOM.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /koha-latest/koha-3.08.04 /etc/perl /usr/local/lib/perl/5.14.2 /usr/local/share/perl/5.14.2 /usr/lib/perl5 /usr/share/perl5 /usr/lib/perl/5.14 /usr/share/perl/5.14 /usr/local/lib/site_perl .) at /koha-latest/koha-3.08.04/C4/Context.pm line 102.
BEGIN failed–compilation aborted at /koha-latest/koha-3.08.04/C4/Context.pm line 102.
Compilation failed in require at /koha-latest/koha-3.08.04/C4/Installer.pm line 24.
BEGIN failed–compilation aborted at /koha-latest/koha-3.08.04/C4/Installer.pm line 24.
Compilation failed in require at Makefile.PL line 31.
BEGIN failed–compilation aborted at Makefile.PL line 31.

Then showing this command

What to do now… Pls give me …. msg

Thanks.

Syed Ahmed

73 Mekbib September 10, 2012 at 7:17 am

Thanks i found it helpful.

74 Anoop September 11, 2012 at 5:27 am

It was really useful. Thank you

75 Varsha Katre September 15, 2012 at 10:43 am

Thank you very much!!! It worked!! :) :) :)

76 Amiya September 28, 2012 at 3:43 pm

nice one..very help full info..

i will give *****

77 Hamid October 15, 2012 at 7:20 am

دمت گرم اينم تو اونت
Thank you very much. It’s very good!

78 Julio November 1, 2012 at 7:26 pm

Thanks a lot, this was really helpful!

79 Martial Tchuente November 27, 2012 at 8:52 am

This definitely solved my problem.
I’m still a Linux newbie.
Thanks!

80 Tom G February 6, 2013 at 11:32 pm

Thanks a lot!

Another tip: you can use wildcards to remove many folders which have the same name at the start, E.G to remove all the folders “recup_dir.1″ , “recup_dir.2″, “recup_dir.3″

I would type ” sudo rm -rf recup_dir*** ” and all the folders disappear :) This was very useful as a file ‘undeleter’ left me with loads of these folders!

81 Elrafie March 16, 2013 at 8:38 pm