Shell – How to delete everything in a directory

Use the find command.

Find all files (recursively) matching a regex: find . -type f -regex '/ex/'
Find all files (recursively) matching a regex and delete them: find . -type f -regex '/ex/' -exec rm {} \;

The brackets store the found pathname, and the backslash escapes the semicolon because it's passed to find; without escaping it, it would be consumed by the shell. If that went over your head, read the first two chapters of "Learning the Bash Shell".

Check the man pages for find for more options. There are a lot more ways to search.

Zsh

mv Foo/*(DN) Bar/

or

setopt -s glob_dots
mv Foo/*(N) Bar/

(Leave out the (N) if you know the directory is not empty.)

Bash

shopt -s dotglob nullglob
mv Foo/* Bar/

Ksh93

If you know the directory is not empty:

FIGNORE='.?(.)'
mv Foo/* Bar/

Standard (POSIX) sh

for x in Foo/* Foo/.[!.]* Foo/..?*; do
  if [ -e "$x" ]; then mv -- "$x" Bar/; fi
done

If you're willing to let the mv command return an error status even though it succeeded, it's a lot simpler:

mv Foo/* Foo/.[!.]* Foo/..?* Bar/

GNU find and GNU mv

find Foo/ -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -exec mv -t Bar/ -- {} +

Standard find

If you don't mind changing to the source directory:

cd Foo/ &&
find . -name . -o -exec sh -c 'mv -- "$@" "$0"' ../Bar/ {} + -type d -prune

Here's more detail about controlling whether dot files are matched in bash, ksh93 and zsh.

Bash

Set the dotglob option.

$ echo *
none zero
$ shopt -s dotglob
$ echo *
..two .one none zero

There's also the more flexible GLOBIGNORE variable, which you can set to a colon-separated list of wildcard patterns to ignore. If unset (the default setting), the shell behaves as if the value was empty if dotglob is set, and as if the value was .* if the option is unset. See Filename Expansion in the manual. The pervasive directories . and .. are always omitted, unless the . is matched explicitly by the pattern.

$ GLOBIGNORE='n*'
$ echo *
..two .one zero
$ echo .*
..two .one
$ unset GLOBIGNORE
$ echo .*
. .. ..two .one
$ GLOBIGNORE=.:..
$ echo .*
..two .one

Ksh93

Set the FIGNORE variable. If unset (the default setting), the shell behaves as if the value was .*. To ignore . and .., they must be matched explicitly (the manual in ksh 93s+ 2008-01-31 states that . and .. are always ignored, but this does not correctly describe the actual behavior).

$ echo *
none zero
$ FIGNORE='@(.|..)'
$ echo *
..two .one none zero
$ FIGNORE='n*'
$ echo *
. .. ..two .one zero

You can include dot files in a pattern by matching them explicitly.

$ unset FIGNORE
$ echo @(*|.[^.]*|..?*)
..two .one none zero

To have the expansion come out empty if the directory is empty, use the N pattern matching option: ~(N)@(*|.[^.]*|..?*) or ~(N:*|.[^.]*|..?*).

Zsh

Set the dot_glob option.

% echo *
none zero
% setopt dot_glob
% echo *
..two .one none zero

. and .. are never matched, even if the pattern matches the leading . explicitly.

% echo .*
..two .one

You can include dot files in a specific pattern with the D glob qualifier.

% echo *(D)
..two .one none zero

Add the N glob qualifier to make the expansion come out empty in an empty directory: *(DN).

Note: you may get filename expansion results in different orders (e.g., none followed by .one followed by ..two) based on your settings of the LC_COLLATE, LC_ALL, and LANG variables.