prunes

Cleans up empty subdirectories by removing them depth-first until files are found.

This is useful when removing lots of files leaves behind the clutter of empty subdirectories.

Some implementations scan a given directory for empty subdirectories. That's fine in certain use cases but limits use to a single root directory, and requires scanning the entire subtree, which may be costly in terms of I/O operations.

prunes works the other way around: Giving it a list of directories, nested or not. It scans only the directories from the list that could potentially be empty, deleting them until a non empty ancestor directory is found. This is just as accurate but much more efficient than an exhaustive search.

API

prunes(...directories)

Cleans up empty directories, travelling up the tree until a non-empty directory is encountered. Leaves intact any files or non-empty directories.

directories

One or more paths of directories to prune. Each will be resolved based on the current working directory.

Use Case

import {basedir} from 'path'
import prunes from 'prunes'

const files = [
  '/some/removed/file.txt',
  '/some/removed/other/file.txt',
  '/more/deprecated/files.txt',
  '/more/deprecated/unused/files.txt',
  '/more/old/files.txt'
  // ... lots more files that were unlinked ...
]

const directories = files.map((file) => basedir(file))

prunes(directories)

Example

Given

beep
├── ity.js
└─┬ boop
  ├─┬ o_O
  │ ├─┬ oh
  │ │ ├── hello
  │ │ └── puny
  │ └── human.txt
  └── party

Running

prunes(
  'beep/party',
  'beep/boop/o_O/oh/hello',
  'beep/boop/o_O/oh/puny'
)

Produces

beep
├── ity.js
└─┬ boop
  └─┬ o_O
    └── human.txt

Peer Dependencies

This package uses Babel to transpile its code to be compatible with the node version it is installed on. Ensure you have installed the necessary peer dependencies.

npm install babel-cli babel-preset-env

On some older Node environments, e.g. 4.x and earlier, you may also require system-wide polyfills.

npm install babel-polyfill

And then load the babel-polyfill library before loading this package.

Colophon

Made by Sebastiaan Deckers in Singapore 🇸🇬