Deleting and recreating folders in bash

Question

I am using the program hazel to tidy my downloads folder every time a file is downloaded. I am now telling it to run a shell script, every week, to delete every folder in my downloads folder and then recreate it.

Is there an easier way to do this (deleting folders/recreating folders) by re-iterating through every folder in my Downloads folder and deleting its contents?

cd ~/Downloads;
rm -rf Archives;
rm -rf DMGs;
rm -rf Documents;
rm -rf Fonts;
rm -rf Mail\ Attachments;
rm -rf Mobile\ Provisioning;
rm -rf Music;
rm -rf Photoshop;
rm -rf Pictures;
rm -rf Videos;

mkdir Archives;
mkdir DMGs;
mkdir Documents;
mkdir Archives;
mkdir Fonts;
mkdir Mobile\ Provisioning;
mkdir Mail\ Attachments;
mkdir Music;
mkdir Photoshop;
mkdir Pictures;
mkdir Videos;

Answer 1

How about:

cd ~/Downloads && rm -rf */*

Or am I missing something?

Note: This will not delete hidden files/directories immediately under the top level.

Answer 2

If you want to delete files while leaving the complete folder structure intact, use

find . -type f -print -exec rm '{}' ';'

If you only need the top level folder structure intact, rm -rf */* as others have suggested is good

Answer 3

It's actually quite simply, this will do it: rm -rf */*

Answer 4

cd /path/to/Downloads
for i in *; do 
    if [ -d "./$i" ]; then
        rm -rf "./$i"
        mkdir "$i"
    fi
done

Answer 5

You could also run :

find ~/Downloads -type f -exec rm {} \;

This will delete all files in that directory.

Replace rm {} \; with ls -l {} \; before running for real to check if everything is okay before deleting the files.