Deleting Content of Folder with Shell Script

How can I delete contents in a folder using a bash script?

You should say "... my bin folder", not "my /bin folder". /bin is an absolute path, bin is a relative path.

rm -rf ~/bin removes $HOME/bin, so not what you want either.

Now, it depends on where you are: if you are in your project directory when you type the command, just type rm -rf bin.

Shell Script for Delete all files in directory and print count of deleted files

The problem is that, by default, rm does not output anything, so there's nothing for wc to count.

You could use the -v option for rm (check your man page)

rm -vrf pattern | wc -l
# or
rm -vrf pattern | echo "$(wc -l) files deleted"

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Another technique is to use find

find * -depth -print -delete | wc -l

Using the -depth directive so that a directory's files are removed before the directory itself. Demo:

$ tree
.
├── a
├── b
├── c
├── d
│   ├── g
│   ├── h
│   ├── i
│   └── k
│       ├── l
│       └── m
├── e
│   └── j
└── f

4 directories, 9 files

$ find * -depth -print -delete | wc -l
13

$ tree
.

0 directories, 0 files

I want to delete all the files under a directory using shell script, passing file directory as an argument

Use the find command for this:

find "$1" -maxdepth 1 -type f -delete

Pass the directory as a parameter in the scripts ($1) and then ensure you are only searching the directory at one level with -maxdepth 1 and searching for files only with -f. Delete what ever is found with -delete.

Deleting a directory contents using shell scripts

You are modifying PATH variable, which is used by the OS defines the path to find the utilities (so that you can invoke it without having to type the full path to the binary). The system cannot find rm and fuser in the folders currently specified by PATH (since you overwritten it with the directory to be deleted), so it prints the error.

tl;dr DO NOT use PATH as your own variable name.

How to safely delete the contents of a folder with a bash script?

_buildFolderTag is fixed in your script, so it should not go out of build subfolder, ever.

You may check what is . currently. It prevents deleting my_crucial_dir/build instead of my_daily_build/build.

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You can use trash-cli instead of rm.

On Ubuntu, it is in the repo: sudo apt-get install trash-cli

throw files to trash: trash-put file1

Once, you should empty the trash: trash-empty

If it is a production script, the user would not be happy with something gone to trash. But you can echo the full path to the user and ask for confirmation:

answer=""
echo "Confirm deleting the build folder: "$(pwd)${_buildFolderTag}
while [[ "$answer" != "y" && "$answer" != "n" ]]
do
  read -p "Your choice (y/n): " answer
done
if [[ "$answer" == "y" ]]
then
  rm -rf ./${_buildFolderTag}/*
fi

Remove the content of multiple folders with a bash script in Moba

You can give multiple files/directories in rm command:

rm -rf path1 path2 path3 pathN

Please note, if you use -rf option, it will delete everything under the path.

Remove specific file from directory using shell script

You are mixing in Windows CMD syntax. The proper sh script would look like

OLD_DIR=$(pwd)
echo "$REPORT_HOME"
REPORT_HOME="$REPORT_HOME/REPORT_HOME"
cd "$REPORT_HOME/lib"
if [ -f antlr-2.7.7.jar ]; then
   rm -rf "antlr-2.7.7.jar"
cd "$OLD_DIR"

However, this is humongously overcomplicated. To delete the file, just

rm -f "$REPORT_HOME/REPORT_HOME/lib/antlr-2.7.7.jar"

The -f flag says to just proceed without an error if the file doesn't exist (and also proceed without asking if there are permissions which would otherwise cause rm to prompt for a confirmation).

Perhaps see also What exactly is current working directory?

This assumes that the variable REPORT_DIR isn't empty, and doesn't start with a dash. For maximal robustness, try

rm -f -- "${REPORT_HOME?variable must be set}/REPORT_HOME/lib/antlr-2.7.7.jar"

Linux, shell script] How to dynamically delete folders by searching by folder name

Here are some guidelines for you:

1. Get the various date segments using GNU date
   
   • Example: current_year=$(date +%Y) will give you the current year
2. Use this type of code to loop over the directories, one level at a time
   
   • Example: for current_dir in /data/*/; do ...
3. Get just the directory name for each item (strip off slashes) using basename or string modification
   
   • Example: current_dir=$(basename "$current_dir")
4. At each level, check if the number is lower than the current year/month/day (depending on level)
   
   • Compare using -lt / -gt
   • Example: if [ "$current_dir" -lt "$current_year" ]; then ... (remove it - or do some logging to start with to make sure you're on track)
5. If the number is equal (-eq) to the current year/month - then you can loop through that next
   
   • Example: for current_dir2 in /data/"$current_dir"/*/; do ...

Deleting content of folder with shell script

Glob expansion doesn't happen inside quotes.

Try:

rm -r -- "$DIR"*

(Just make really sure you don't put a space after the quotes.)

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