OSX Terminal Help

[SimonMac]

Dear Lazyweb, I have a folder on OSX with about 150 other folders within, most of the other folders have a folder in it call XYZ, how would I go about deleting all XYZ folders and anything in that folder without removing anything else.

[DaveB]

Dear Lazyweb, I have a folder on OSX with about 150 other folders within, most of the other folders have a folder in it call XYZ, how would I go about deleting all XYZ folders and anything in that folder without removing anything else.

Should be able to do it using Spotlight to search for folders named XYZ within the root folder. Then just highlight and drag and drop to the trash.

Type XYZ into the search window in Finder, then click the little + button underneath it and modify the search terms to "Kind" "Folder".

If you are feeling brave you could use the command line via Find and RM, strongly suggest making it interactive with the -i flag on RM!

cd <folder>
Find . -name "xyz" -exec rm -ri "{}" \;

That should find all files with the name "xyz" recursively within the top level folder and delete them asking you to confirm each deletion in turn.

[Platypus]

Should be able to do it using Spotlight to search for folders named XYZ within the root folder. Then just highlight and drag and drop to the trash.

Type XYZ into the search window in Finder, then click the little + button underneath it and modify the search terms to "Kind" "Folder".

If you are feeling brave you could use the command line via Find and RM, strongly suggest making it interactive with the -i flag on RM!

cd <folder>
Find . -name "xyz" -exec rm -ri "{}" \;

That should find all files with the name "xyz" recursively within the top level folder and delete them asking you to confirm each deletion in turn.

I think it's

find . -name "xyz" -exec rm -rf {} \;

But then I've only been working with Unix for 30 years

The above command will generate lots of errors as the xyz directories disappear under find's feet, but not to worry

[davidbieder]

I do this quiet regularly in order to remove all node_modules or .git folders:

find . -type d -name "XYZ" -exec rm -rf {} \;

You can drop this statement while being in the parent directory. I put this terminal statement into a *.sh file which allows me to execute it easily.