Delete a directory and everything in it
Destructive
What do risk levels mean?
- Read-only
- Inspects state without changing anything.
- Low risk
- Reversible with a routine follow-up command.
- Medium risk
- Changes state; undo path documented.
- Destructive
- Deletes or overwrites; confirmation required.
Permanently removes a directory tree after inspecting what it contains — the careful version of rm -rf.
filesdeletecleanupremove
Confirmation required
This recipe is destructive and requires confirmation — confirm you understand the impact before running any command below.
Parameters
Directory to delete, with everything under it.
Commands
See the directory's size and a sample of what will be deleted
du -sh "<directory>" && find "<directory>" | head -n 20Permanently delete the directory and all its contents
rm -rf "<directory>"Verification
ls "<directory>"An error like "No such file or directory" — the directory is gone.
Undo
Not undoable
rm -rf bypasses the trash; the contents are unrecoverable without backups. Verify the path and run the inspection step first, every time.
Pitfalls
- An empty or mistyped variable can turn the path into "/" or the home directory — echo the path before deleting.
- If the directory is a symlink, rm -rf deletes the link's target contents when a trailing slash is used; check with ls -ld first.
- Prefer moving to the trash (macOS "mv to ~/.Trash", or a tool like trash-cli) when recoverability matters.