Recursively remove all empty sub-directories from a directory tree 

find . -type d | tac | xargs rmdir 2>/dev/null

November 29, 2011 — bashoneliners

Explanation

  • find will output all the directories
  • tac reverses the ordering of the lines, so "leaf" directories come first
  • The reordering is important, because rmdir removes only empty directories
  • We redirect error messages (about the non-empty directories) to /dev/null

Limitations

In UNIX and BSD systems you might not have tac, you can try the less intuitive tail -r instead.

file-management directory-manipulation
find xargs tac rmdir

Alternative one-liners

Recursively remove all empty sub-directories from a directory tree 

find . -depth  -type d  -empty -exec rmdir {} \;

January 31, 2012 — openiduser16