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 and can also be retrieved any time using npm install.

So, I need a solution to delete all node_modules folders recursively from a specified path using the command line interface. Any suggestions/ help is highly appreciable.

Answer 1

Print out a list of directories to be deleted:

find . -name 'node_modules' -type d -prune

Delete directories from the current working directory:

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

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Alternatively you can use trash (brew install trash) for staged deletion:

find . -name node_modules -type d -prune -exec trash {} +

Answer 2

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 '{}' \;

Answer 3

I have come across with this solution,

• first find the folder using find and specify name of the folder.
• execute delete command recursively -exec rm -rf '{}' +

run the following command to delete folders recursively

find /path -type d -name "node_modules" -exec rm -rf '{}' +

Answer 4

This works really well

find . -name "node_modules" -exec rm -rf '{}' +