Recursive Delete

A relatively common file clean-up operation is to delete files that match a filename or pattern from a current directory and directories located under it.

Example:
You want to delete all the thumbnail database files (Thumbs.db) that Windows creates when creating thumbnails for multimedia files in the current directory.

First find out what will be deleted.

user@deorc$> find . -name "Thumbs.db" -type f

When you are satisfied about the files to be deleted, type:

user@deorc$> find . -name "Thumbs.db" -type f -delete

While some may find the first step a superfluous one, it is really not. It provides a vitally important sanity check to place on the automation. You want to be 100% certain on what will be deleted since the second command has the potential to cause data loss.