Delete node_modules folder recursively from a specified path using command line

Question

I have multiple npm projects saved in a local directory. Now I want to take backup of my projects without the node_modules folder, as it is taking a lot of space a

Answer 1

Improving on the accepted answer,

find . -name 'node_modules' -type d -prune -exec rm -rf '{}' +

I found that the command would run a very long time to fetch all folders and then run a delete command, to make the command resumable I'd suggest using \; and to see progress of the command being run use -print to see the directory being deleted.

Note: You must first cd into the root directory and then run the command or instead of find . use find {project_directory}

To delete folders one by one

find . -name 'node_modules' -type d -prune -exec rm -rf '{}' \;

To delete folders one by one and printing the folder being deleted

find . -name 'node_modules' -type d -prune -print -exec rm -rf '{}' \;

Edit:

For the people who like interactive way of doing this refer to @jeckep answer, run this in the directory that you wish to prune.

npx npkill