check if directory exists and delete in one command unix

Question

Is it possible to check if a directory exists and delete if it does in Unix using a single command  I have situation where I use ANT  sshexec  task where I can run only a single command in the remote machine  And I need to check if directory exists and delete it

User · Accepted Answer

Assuming  WORKING DIR is set to the directory    this one-liner should do it   if   -d   WORKING DIR     then rm -Rf  WORKING DIR  fi    otherwise just replace with your directory

User · Answer

Here is another one liner     -d  tmp test     amp  amp  rm -r  tmp test    amp  amp  means execute the statement which follows only if the preceding statement executed successfully  returned exit code zero

User · Answer

Try  bash -c    -d my mystery dirname    amp  amp  run this command   This will work if you can run bash on the remote machine     In bash    -d something   checks if there is directory called  something   returning a success code if it exists and is a directory  Chaining commands with  amp  amp  runs the second command only if the first one succeeded  So   -d somedir    amp  amp  command runs the command only if the directory exists

User · Answer

Why not just use rm -rf  some dir   That will remove the directory if it s present  otherwise do nothing  Unlike rm -r  some dir this flavor of the command won t crash if the folder doesn t exist

[unix] check if directory exists and delete in one command unix

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