Find and remove all empty files

Question

How can I search all empty files of non-root system and delete them?

Saying "Unix" is very vague. There are many unix-like OSs. You should specify the actual OS.

khachik · Answer 1 · 2011-04-02 20:36:00Z

up vote 1 down vote

find . -size 0 -print.

replace -print with -delete and . with the directory you need, but execute carefully, it will really delete all empty files.

answered Apr 2 '11 at 20:36

khachik

	thanks, but i want to remove also all empty files of non root directory ,and not in a specific directory ? – maalem Apr 2 '11 at 20:46
	how can i execute that command on all the files except those on the root directory ? – maalem Apr 2 '11 at 20:56
	@maalem: you can specify multiple directories instead of `.`. They can a result of another `find`, not sure how to specify the depth to find dirs in the root dir only (have no chance to test now, try `man find`). – khachik Apr 2 '11 at 21:04
	@maalem, @khachik, i modify the answer to reflect your comments here (if i understood your intent correctly...) – Piotr Findeisen Apr 2 '11 at 21:12

feedback

Piotr Findeisen · Answer 2 · 2011-04-02 20:34:52Z

find /path/to/mountpoint -empty -type f -delete

If your find does not have -delete option, replace it with -exec rm '{}' ';'

If you want to delete all empty files except for files directly under / run:

find / -mindepth 2 -empty -type f -delete

If you want to delete all empty files, but skip whole /root directory run

find / \( -path /root -prune \) -empty -type f -delete

i want to say that / includes many directories between them there is the root ,so i want to execute a find command on all the empty files on / except those on the root directory ?
You mean you want to skip /root from cleaning? If so, I modified my answer. If not so, please give an example.

migrated from stackoverflow.com Apr 3 '11 at 23:07