I have a large directory tree where most but not all directories are empty, and where I might want to keep a few of the existing files.
I can use rm -ir to get rm to ask me for each file if it should be deleted. But it also asks questions like rm: descend into directory 'foo'? rm: remove directory 'foo'? to which I'd always say yes (and then attempts to delete any non-empty directory fails with a clear warning message). It would be less tedious if the questions about directories were suppressed. A reasonable command line flag might be --interactive=non-dir (If there are any entries which are niether files nor directories, e.g, a named pipe, I'd want rm to ask, hence "non-dir" rather than "file"). Another variant which would be useful is to traverse a directory tree and recursively delete all empty directories, without asking any questions. Would make sense as a --recursive/-r flag to rmdir, rather than a new option to rm. I'm using GNU coreutils 8.28, which doesn't seem to have these features. Regards, /Niels -- Niels Möller. PGP-encrypted email is preferred. Keyid 368C6677. Internet email is subject to wholesale government surveillance.
