Search and delete .Trash

Question

I have 4 large USB devices with lots of backups collected over the years.

I want to search for all .Trash folders and delete the contents on Fedora 17. I tried the following which failed:-

    # find . -name ".Trash*"-exec rm -rf {} \;
    find: paths must precede expression: rm
    Usage: find [-H] [-L] [-P] [-Olevel] [-D help|tree|search|stat|rates|opt|exec] [path...] [expression]

Any hints appreciated!

Answer 1

You missed space between name pattern and exec parameter:

This:

 # find . -name ".Trash*"-exec rm -rf {} \;

Should be

 # find . -name ".Trash*" -exec rm -rf {} \;

Answer 2

To expand on @rkosegi's answer:

 # find . -depth -name ".Trash*" -exec rm -rf {} \;

Use -depth so that find doesn't try to descend the now deleted directory.