I have two directories on the same level and I can do:
rm -rf dir1/; rm -rf dir2/
but they will be running sequentially, how could I remove them in parallel? is there a generic solution too which allows me to extend to many folders?
Update
The directories may be deeply nested containing other directories and so on.
Run the commands in background
rm -rf dir &; rm -rf dir2 &;
syntax
long_command with arguments > redirection &
you can capture any messages by redirecting the command output to a file.
This links will help ==> http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Bash-Prog-Intro-HOWTO-3.html
The question title & given example gives an impression like the issue is very small. But an added bounty showing the seriousness of the issue.
It would be better if you specify the nature of your files. However, I am providing some split based deletion which can implemented as parallel executions You can try below options based on your requirement.
find /yourpath/folder1 -size +1048576 -exec rm -f {} \; &
find /yourpath/folder2 -size +1048576 -exec rm -f {} \; &
ls -l /yourpath/folder1 | awk '{print $9}' | awk -F. '{print $(NF)}' |sort |uniq
you may get result like
.txt
.log
.tmp
.zip
now, delete the files based on extensions
find yourpath/folder1 -name '*.txt' -exec rm {} \; &
find yourpath/folder1 -name '*.tmp' -exec rm {} \; &
find yourpath/folder1 -name '*.log' -exec rm {} \; &
find yourpath/folder2 -name '*.txt' -exec rm {} \; &
find yourpath/folder2 -name '*.tmp' -exec rm {} \; &
find yourpath/folder2 -name '*.log' -exec rm {} \; &
find yourpath/folder1 -mtime +5 -exec rm {} \;
OR
find yourpath/folder2 -mtime +5 |xargs rm
find foldername -exec rm -rf {} \; &