Delete A Directory

To delete a directory in the terminal, you have two options depending on whether the directory is empty or not.

Deleting an empty directory:

The rmdir command stands for remove directory. It can only delete a directory that is completely empty:

rmdir empty_folder

If the folder contains any files or subdirectories, rmdir will fail with an error.

Deleting a directory and all its contents:

To delete a directory along with everything inside it, use rm with the -r flag (recursive):

rm -r documents

This removes the documents folder and every file and subfolder inside it.

You can also combine it with -f to force delete without any confirmation prompts:

rm -rf documents

Warning: rm -rf is one of the most powerful and dangerous commands in the terminal. It permanently deletes everything without asking. Always double-check your path before running it — there is no undo.