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I have a directory full of several other directories with the same structure, so it looks like this

top/A/Output/platform/..
top/B/Output/platform/..
top/C/Output/platform/..

and so on. I want to, starting from the top level, delete all the directories downwards of the platform directories, such that I end up with

top/A/Output
top/B/Output
top/C/Output

Can anyone recommend me a command for this? I am on rhel7 with bash 4.1.2

EDIT:

I have a lot of '2nd level' directories whose names are more complex than single letters, sorry should have noted that more explicitly

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  • Something like rm -rf top/[ABC]/Output/platform maybe? Commented Feb 6, 2017 at 15:16
  • If any of the existing answers solved your problem, please consider accepting it with the checkmark; thank you! Commented Apr 18, 2017 at 10:53

3 Answers 3

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rm -rf top/?/Output/platform

or, if the 2nd-level directory may be more than one character (A, B, or C in your example):

rm -rf top/*/Output/platform
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  • This works because Bash, like all shells, interprets ? as “any single character in a filename” and * as “any sequence of characters in a filename” (note that this is “filename”, not “path”; they don’t match /). Commented Feb 6, 2017 at 15:31
  • Note that the star (*) won't match directories and files which start with a dot. Commented Feb 6, 2017 at 16:04
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See man find for more options like regex patterns:

find top -type d -name platform -print0 | xargs -0 rm -rf
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  • Will unfortunately also delete any other platform directory elsewhere, not just under top/*/Output. Commented Feb 6, 2017 at 15:43
  • @Kusalananda That's right, I have forgot the working directory. Thank you for your note. Commented Feb 6, 2017 at 15:47
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You can use find this way :

find top -path 'top/*/Output/platform' -delete

Note that this will delete file and directories which start with a dot.

The following command won't delete files and directories starting with a dot, because the shell will skip them when it replaces the stars :

rm top/*/Output/platform
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