# emptydir This tool looks for empty directories and deletes them. ```console $ emptydir ``` More specifically, it deletes directories which are completely empty, or which only contain files/folders which I don't think are worth keeping (e.g. `.DS_Store` or `__pycache__`). ## Why not use `find`? Deleting empty directories is a common problem, and there's a suggestion on [Unix Stack Exchange question](https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/107556/431830): > Combining GNU find options and predicates, this command should do the job: > > ``` > find . -type d -empty -delete > ``` The reason this isn't suitable is because it only deletes directories which are *completely* empty. But sometimes a directory can be non-empty, even if it appears empty. For example, this directory on macOS: A Finder window for a folder 'totally_empty' which apparently contains no files. I consider this directory to be empty, but it will be skipped by `find . -type d -empty -delete` because of the hidden [`.DS_Store` file](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.DS_Store). This tool will delete directories which are empty or almost empty -- that is, when they only contain files or folders which I don't think are worth keeping, like `.DS_Store` or `__pycache__`. ## Installation You can download compiled binaries from the [GitHub releases](https://github.com/alexwlchan/emptydir/releases). Alternatively, you can install from source. You need Rust installed; I recommend using [Rustup]. Then clone this repository and compile the code: ```console $ git clone "https://github.com/alexwlchan/emptydir.git" $ cd emptydir $ cargo install --path . ``` [Rustup]: https://rustup.rs/ ## Usage Pass the path of the top-level directory you want to clean as a command-line argument, for example: ```console $ emptydir ~/Desktop ``` It will print the path to every empty directory that it deletes: ```console $ mkdir -p ~/Desktop/foo/bar/baz $ emptydir ~/Desktop/ /Users/alexwlchan/Desktop/foo/bar/baz /Users/alexwlchan/Desktop/foo/bar /Users/alexwlchan/Desktop/foo 3 directories deleted ``` If you pass no arguments, it will look for empty directories in the current directory: ```console $ emptydir ``` ## Which files/folders are safe to delete? Currently the list of files/folders which I consider safe to delete is hard-coded in `can_be_deleted.rs`: * .DS_Store stores some folder attributes used for showing the folder in the Finder, which I don't need to keep * `.ipynb_checkpoints` is a folder used by Jupyter Notebooks, but not important if I've deleted the notebooks * `.jekyll-cache` is a cache directory used by Jekyll sites, but can be easily regenerated and will be rebuilt regularly as part of the Jekyll build process * `.venv` is the name I use for virtual environments, which I can easily regenerate if necessary * `__pycache__` is the bytecode cache in Python projects, which is pointless if the original Python files have been removed * `Thumbs.db` is a file that contains thumbnails on Windows systems If you want to change that list, you need to modify the source code and compile a new version -- it's not a configurable setting. Note that these files will only be deleted if they are the only items in a folder. If, for example, a folder contains both `.DS_Store` and some text files, then nothing will be deleted. ## How it works For a detailed explanation of how this tool works, you can read [my accompanying article](https://alexwlchan.net/2024/emptydir/). ## License MIT.