"cannot remove 'some_directory': Directory not empty" I tried to delete some directory, but $ rm DE.aspx_files -r rm: cannot remove `DE.aspx_files': Directory not empty But listing its content returns none $ ls DE.aspx_files $ **Added:** Actually $ ls -la DE.aspx_files total 4 drwx------ 1 ting ting 4096 Sep 14 20:48 . drwx------ 1 ting ting 0 Sep 13 22:34 .. -rw------- 1 ting ting 0 Sep 13 22:34 .fuse_hidden0001d4bf00000006 When I try to `rm .fuse_hidden0001d4bf00000006`, it is deleted, but another new `.fuse_hidden0001d4bf00000007` created. So I wonder what happened, and how to fix this problem? Note: it is a newly bought external portable HDD, and I just copy some files to it using a data recovery program. OS: Ubuntu 12.04 Thanks!

### Hidden Files

You may have hidden files. You can find them with `ls -la` to make sure you're okay with really deleting them first. Then you can delete the files before running `rm -r` or `rmdir` as needed.

### Forcing the Recursive Delete

You can also just do `rm -rf` to force the recursive deletion even if the target directory contains files. All the usual warnings apply, but it will get the job done regardless of what your directory contains--as long as you have permissions to delete the files and directories, of course.