To achieve the above purpose, you can employ the find command together with rm command using the syntax below. Here, the + sign at the end enables multiple directories to be read simultaneously.
$ find /start/search/from/this/dir -name "dirname-to-delete" -type d -exec /bin/rm -rf {} +
Attention: You must use rm command carefully because it is one of the most dangerous commands to use in Linux: you may accidentally delete critical system directories, thus resulting to system failure.
In the example below, we will search for a directory called files_2008 and delete it recursively:
$ $find ~/Downloads/software -name "files_2008" -type d -exec /bin/rm -rf {} +
You can also use find and xargs; in the following syntax, -print0 action enables printing of the full directory path on the standard output, followed by a null character:
$ find /start/search/from/this/dir -name "dirname-to-delete" -type d -print0 | xargs -0 /bin/rm -rf "{}"
Using the same example above, we have:
$ find ~/Downloads/software -name "files_2008" -type d -print0 | xargs -0 /bin/rm -rf "{}"
Last but not least, if you are concerned about the security of your data, then you may want to learn 3 ways of permanently and securely deleting ‘Files and Directories’ in Linux.
