Using the find command, it is easy to recursively delete all empty directories. Which empty directories are safe to delete, and which ones are not?

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1 Answer

You can recursively delete directories in which you put your data (like Documents, Videos, Images, Downloads, etc.), the others into your home directory (e.g. .cache, .gnome, , .ssh), your root, its sub-folders, etc., shouldn't be removed in this way!

A useful and quite safe way to do this is using the rmdir command (with find):

find . -empty -type d -exec rmdir {} +

It starts in the current working directory.

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