Linux delete file with size 0 [duplicate]

Question

How do I delete a certain file in linux if its size is 0. I want to execute this in an crontab without any extra script.

l filename.file | grep 5th-tab | not eq 0 | rm

Something like this?

Awakening

Answer 1

This will delete all the files in a directory (and below) that are size zero.

find {directory_location} -size 0 -print -delete

If you just want a particular file;

if [ ! -s /tmp/foo ] ; then
  rm /tmp/foo
fi

Bradney

shortcut: [ -s /tmp/foo ] || rm /tmp/foo (test if size is zero, else remove). Also note the xargs is unsafe if file/directory names contain spaces; find ... -exec rm '{}' \; is safe in that situation. – Trinitarianism

@Frank, you are incorrect about xargs. The '-print0` and xargs -0 corrects for the spaces. – Bradney

@FrankH: Plus, even if using find -exec, always favour + over ; in cases where you can (and this is one such case). – Hygeia

Would rm -- (note the trailing -- characters) be safer here than simply rm to prevent rogue filenames? serverfault.com/questions/337082/… – Bougainville

Is there also a command for running a dry run, to see which files would get removed? – Monitory

@SimonBaars find /tmp -size 0 -print0 |xargs -0 echo rm – Bradney

Why not simply -delete? – Cathrin

@Cathrin because -delete is new, and my version works with every version of find produced in the last 40 years. – Bradney

Is -print0 really 40 years old and ubiquitous? – Cathrin

@Rusian pretty sure it was in BSD 4.3, although apparently it didn't get into strict SysV Unices like early AIX. – Bradney

Answer 2

you would want to use find:

 find . -size 0 -delete

Garner

I would add "-type f", as also directory are marked to be of size zero. The "dot" is optional. – Eshelman

The "dot" is optional for Linux, but not optional for Mac OS – Carriole

There is an -empty option :-) – Casares

@Casares Exactly, if we're allowed to use non POSIX flags, find . -empty -delete is the coolest. :-) – Outdare

You can add -maxdepth 1 for the current folder. – Quantifier

Answer 3

To search and delete empty files in the current directory and subdirectories:

find . -type f -empty -delete

-type f is necessary because also directories are marked to be of size zero.

---

The dot . (current directory) is the starting search directory. If you have GNU find (e.g. not Mac OS), you can omit it in this case:

find -type f -empty -delete

From GNU find documentation:

If no files to search are specified, the current directory (.) is used.

Eshelman

I would add -name '*.SomeFileExtension' for example: if you wanted to delete just text files then I would use: find . -name '*.txt' -type f -empty -delete – Dyane

@jspek, well, that depends if you have that specific use... Usually when you are after empty files you are up to kill them all. :) – Eshelman

Had to grab a coffee after running this command on a directory with 2.2 million files. :P Had worked like a charm when I came back, 350.000 remained. Thanks! – Medarda

Answer 4

You can use the command find to do this. We can match files with -type f, and match empty files using -size 0. Then we can delete the matches with -delete.

find . -type f -size 0 -delete

Metagenesis

find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -size 0 -delete This finds the empthy files in the current directory without going into sub-directories. – Underwrite

To generalize this slightly, note that the value passed to -size can have a suffix indicating the units. The default is not bytes. – Bursa

Answer 5

On Linux, the stat(1) command is useful when you don't need find(1):

(( $(stat -c %s "$filename") )) || rm "$filename"

The stat command here allows us just to get the file size, that's the -c %s (see the man pages for other formats). I am running the stat program and capturing its output, that's the $( ). This output is seen numerically, that's the outer (( )). If zero is given for the size, that is FALSE, so the second part of the OR is executed. Non-zero (non-empty file) will be TRUE, so the rm will not be executed.

Instruct

Answer 6

This works for plain BSD so it should be universally compatible with all flavors. Below.e.g in pwd ( . )

find . -size 0 |  xargs rm

Mutazilite

Doesn't BSD support -delete option? freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?find(1) – Eshelman

@Eshelman OpenBSD 6.0 at least doesn't. – Burress

Answer 7

For a non-recursive delete (using du and awk):

rm `du * | awk '$1 == "0" {print $2}'`

Grendel

-bash: /usr/bin/du: Argument list too long – Dulcy

Answer 8

find . -type f -empty -exec rm -f {} \;

Greaseball

you can just use the -delete flag - saves an exec. – Argile