Find Empty Files and Directories from Command Line

By  on  

If you are anything like me, you like to keep your projects as tight as possible.  By "tight" I mean no lingering, useless files or directories, because bloat is an incredible annoyance and distraction.  And we don't want distractions, do we?

There's a really easy way to find empty files and directories from the command line:

find /path/to/source/directory -empty

The result will be a list of empty files or directories which you can gloriously remove from your project and relax knowing you're running an incredibly tight ship.

Recent Features

  • By
    JavaScript Promise API

    While synchronous code is easier to follow and debug, async is generally better for performance and flexibility. Why "hold up the show" when you can trigger numerous requests at once and then handle them when each is ready?  Promises are becoming a big part of the JavaScript world...

  • By
    Responsive and Infinitely Scalable JS Animations

    Back in late 2012 it was not easy to find open source projects using requestAnimationFrame() - this is the hook that allows Javascript code to synchronize with a web browser's native paint loop. Animations using this method can run at 60 fps and deliver fantastic...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    MooTools Accordion: Mouseover Style

    Everyone loves the MooTools Accordion plugin but I get a lot of requests from readers asking me how to make each accordion item open when the user hovers over the item instead of making the user click. You have two options: hack the original plugin...

  • By
    CSS calc

    CSS is a complete conundrum; we all appreciate CSS because of its simplicity but always yearn for the language to do just a bit more. CSS has evolved to accommodate placeholders, animations, and even click events. One problem we always thought...

Discussion

  1. Is this the Mac version of the command? The windows version seems to be in a different order. Plus, I can’t seem to find a setting for the empty folders on Windows. If know, could you share? Thanks.

  2. Arpen

    This command results in f:\>find /path/to/source/directory -empty
    FIND: Invalid switch’ using the command line. Does anyone have a better way to find empty folders using CMD line or Powershell?

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!