rmdir

Since we're finished with our nested directory, lets remove it.

rmdir is the command to remove an empty directory. rmdir takes an argument of the directory to be deleted. rmdir <directory>

$ rmdir nested

Its important to note, that rmdir expects an empty directory. If it isn't empty, you'll get a complaint like this:

Using rm with directories

rm can also be used with directories. To remove a non-empty directory you must use rm.

To remove a directory that has contents that you want to delete too, you can pass a -r command to the folder and its contents permanently. The -r flag stands for recursive. So the command will go through each directory in the contents and delete its children. The command would look like rm -r <directory>

Be careful when using rm, especially with the -r as there is no 'trash' to recover your accidental deletes from.

An example with that flag: