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commandlinefu.com is the place to record those command-line gems that you return to again and again.

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May 19, 2015 - A Look At The New Commandlinefu
I've put together a short writeup on what kind of newness you can expect from the next iteration of clfu. Check it out here.
March 2, 2015 - New Management
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awk, bash, curl, find, grep, Linux, sed
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Functions

Find broken symlinks and delete them

Terminal - Find broken symlinks and delete them
rm **/*(-@)
2012-09-18 20:18:57
User: xro
Functions: rm
2
Up
Down
Find broken symlinks and delete them

recursively deletes all broken symlinks using zsh globbing syntax.

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Alternatives

There are 2 alternatives - vote for the best!

Terminal - Alternatives
find -L /path/to/check -type l -delete
2009-06-06 16:07:04
User: goodevilgenius
Functions: find
19
Up
Down
Find broken symlinks and delete them

If you don't want to delete them, but just want to list them, do

find -L /path -type l

If you want to delete them with confirmation first, do

find -L /path -type l -exec rm -i {} +

Using the -L flag follows symlinks, so the -type l test only returns true if the link can't be followed, or is a symlink to another broken symlink.

Comments (76) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
find . -type l -exec test ! -e {} \; -delete
2012-12-26 06:27:13
User: seb1245
Functions: find test
Tags: find
2
Up
Down
Find broken symlinks and delete them

This command is adapted from http://otomaton.wordpress.com/2012/12/26/find-broken-symbolic-links/

Solutions with

find -L

don't work when the link is a loop, an error message is printed.

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
for i in $(file * | grep broken | cut -d : -f 1); do rm $i; done
2010-11-02 16:10:42
User: Znuff
Functions: cut file grep rm
-8
Up
Down
remove all dead symbolic links in a directory
Comments (41) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious

Know a better way?

If you can do better, submit your command here.

What others think

find . -xtype l

yields the same results as

find . -type l -exec test ! -e {} \; print
Comment by bobpaul 37 weeks and 2 days ago

Your point of view

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