How to remove all empty plain text files using GNU utils ?

I was working on a project that automate some data analysis and statistics. In that script I rely heavily on creating and modifying plain text files. After running that script for hours I got hundreds of plain-text files. So, I need to remove all empty ones.

Here are the ways I used to remove all empty text files.

List all empty text files 🔗

I run this code to get all empty files, to make sure it grabs empty files.

find . -type f -name "*.txt" -size 0

Remove the empty files 🔗

Then I re-run the command but append -delete to it, to remove all files it grabs.

find . -type f -name "*.txt" -size 0 -delete

Here is a break down for the command:

• find .: This starts the find command and tells it to search in the current directory (.) and all its subdirectories.
• -type f: This option limits the search to regular files (not directories, symbolic links, etc.).
• -name "*.txt": This further filters the search to only files ending with the .txt extension. If you want to delete all empty files, regardless of extension, omit this part.
• -size 0: This option selects files with a size of 0 bytes, which are empty files.
• -delete: This option deletes the files that match the criteria. It’s often a good idea to first run the command without -delete to see which files will be affected (and that is my cautious strategy always).

Not GNU find 🔗

This solution relies on GNU find, which is the standard on most Linux systems. On other Unix-like systems, the -delete option may not be available. If it is not available, you can use the -exec rm {} \; option instead:

find . -type f -name "*.txt" -size 0 -exec rm {} \;

This alternative approach executes the rm (remove) command for each found file.

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