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To find and remove empty files, I have found the following Stack Overflow question:

https://stackoverflow.com/q/3157343

There are about 10 answers there, but all of them use -size 0 and not -empty.

E.g., a +153 answer:

find . -name 'file*' -size 0 -print0 | xargs -0 rm

Another answer, +100:

find -name 'file*' -size 0 -delete

Why is that? In other words, which advantages -size 0 provides over -empty?

My personal solution, for macOS, is

find . -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type f -empty -print -delete
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    In zsh: rm -f -- *(.L0) (or rm -f -- *(D.L0) to also delete hidden ones as your personal solution would). Commented Dec 17, 2024 at 14:55

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The -size operand is specified by POSIX, so any implementation of find following that supports it. -empty isn’t, and therefore isn’t available everywhere. So it’s safer to use -size 0 to check that a file is empty if you don’t know what version of find it will be used with.

Your personal solution explicitly checks for regular files, so this isn’t relevant there, but -empty also matches on empty directories, which isn’t the case for -size 0. At least in GNU find, it doesn’t match anything other than a regular file or directory, regardless of size.

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  • Also, -size 0 will not be true for empty directories, but -empty would be. In the command in the question, there is no filetype check. Commented Dec 17, 2024 at 10:04
  • Yes, that’s why I mentioned checking for empty files, but it’s worth stating explicitly… The OP’s chosen command does have a file type check. Commented Dec 17, 2024 at 10:05
  • Ah, yes the last command in the question does have a -type f test, which would be needed with -empty. Commented Dec 17, 2024 at 10:07
  • GNU find's -empty yields false as well for all non-regular non-directory files (like devices, fifos, symlinks) regardless of the size reported for them by lstat(). Commented Dec 17, 2024 at 11:13

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