a question for you shell scripters

[Kevin Hodle]

If you ask me, the 'right' way would be witchever way works :)

... But, if you wanted a snippet of shell code, here you go

 ls /whatever > test.dir
 if [ -s test.dir ]; then
    # directory has stuff in it
 else
    #directory is empty, you can rm -rf it

Frankly, your original method seems fine for your needs.

 
Kevin Hodle
CCNA, Network+, A+
Alexander Open Systems
Network Operations Center
kevinh at aos5.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Jason Clinton [mailto:clintonj at umkc.edu] 
Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2003 9:22 AM
To: kclug
Subject: a question for you shell scripters

How can I rmdir all subdirectories that have no files in them, 
recursively. For instance: I have a music directory with artist 
subdirectories with album directories beneath that. Over the course of 
time, I have asked XMMS to delete a song I'm tired of hearing. I've 
found that there are not artists that I have no songs remaining for so 
their entire directory structure is just a bunch of empty folders.

I came up with this newbish solution:

# rmdir */*
# rmdir *

This works fine (since rmdir will only delete empty stuff) from the 
music directory and if I don't have lots of subdirectories, but I'm 
wondering what the /right/ way to do it is.

-- 
Jason Clinton
I don't believe in witty sigs.