Is it safe to delete empty directories recursively on Linux?

Using the find command, it is easy to recursively delete all empty directories. Which empty directories are safe to delete, and which ones are not?

1 Answer

You can recursively delete directories in which you put your data (like Documents, Videos, Images, Downloads, etc.), the others into your home directory (e.g. .cache, .gnome, , .ssh), your root, its sub-folders, etc., shouldn't be removed in this way!

A useful and quite safe way to do this is using the rmdir command (with find):

find . -empty -type d -exec rmdir {} + 

It starts in the current working directory.