"No such file or directory" when using find with -exec option

Question

I'm trying to understand how to delete directories using the Linux find command with -exec option, without getting a "No such file or directory" response. On my Raspberry Pi I go to /home/pi and type: mkdir testing So now I have created a new directory named /home/pi/testing. Next I try to delete the directory using this command:

find /home/pi/testing -type d -exec rm -rf {} \;

I get the following response:

find: '/home/pi/testing': No such file or directory

But the /home/pi/testing directory is gone. So the command seemed effective, but why the "No such file or directory" error?

larsks · Accepted Answer · 2020-10-01 13:24:28Z

Find is trying to enter the directory after it has been deleted. If you add the -depth option to your command line, find will run in depth-first mode in which it will attempt to process the contents of the directory before deleting it:

find /home/pi/testing -depth -type d -exec rm -rf {} \;

That said, your find command line isn't very useful: for this operation, you would generally just run rm -rf /home/pi/testing.

This helped, thanks a lot! Yes, ultimately I want to use the find command for more advanced operations than this, but wanted to make the example as simple as possible.

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