poof

Ever rm -rf'd a large directory and sat there waiting for it to finish? With poof you no longer need to wait:

$ poof ./large-file ./large-directory "**/globs"

What's "poof"?

poof is a fast, non-blocking CLI alternative to rm -rf, designed for deleting large files and directories without waiting for cleanup to complete.

It works by quickly moving files and directories out of the way, then deleting them in the background. This means large deletions finish instantly from your perspective, even when there's a lot of data to clean up.

On a large filesystem (4.7 GB, 190k files), poof returns control in ~0.6s while rm -rf takes ~28s and rimraf ~12s. Full benchmarks below.

Features

• ⚡ Immediate return: deletion doesn't block your shell
• 🗂 Move-then-delete: fast, atomic rename before cleanup
• 🛡 Built-in safeguards: root protection and directory scoping
• 🖥 Cross-platform: macOS, Linux, and Windows

Install

npm install -g poof

CLI Usage

# Delete files or directories
$ poof node_modules dist

# Use glob patterns
$ poof "*.log" "temp-*"

# Recursive match with ** (searches all subdirectories)
$ poof "**/node_modules" "**/dist"

# Verbose output
$ poof --verbose ./large-directory

Options

Flag	Alias	Description
--dry	-d	Preview files without deleting
--verbose	-v	Log each file as it's deleted
--ignore	-i	Glob pattern to exclude from deletion
--dangerous		Allow deleting paths outside current directory
--version		Show version
--help		Show help

File matching

poof accepts explicit paths or glob patterns for flexible file matching.

[!TIP] When using glob patterns, start with --dry to preview what will match before deleting.

Quick refresher: shell quoting

How unquoted glob patterns are expanded depends on your shell's settings (dotglob, globstar, etc.).
To get consistent behavior, quote the pattern so poof handles the matching itself.

# The shell expands the glob before poof runs
$ poof **/node_modules

# Recommended: poof expands the glob
$ poof "**/node_modules"

Basic patterns

# Explicit paths
$ poof node_modules

# Multiple paths
$ poof dist coverage

# Wildcards in current directory
$ poof "*.log"
$ poof "temp-*"

Recursive patterns

Use ** to match across nested directories:

# All node_modules in a monorepo
$ poof "**/node_modules"

# All .log files recursively
$ poof "**/*.log"

# Multiple patterns
$ poof "**/dist" "**/coverage" "**/*.tmp"

Excluding paths

Use --ignore to exclude paths from deletion:

# Delete all dist folders except those in node_modules
$ poof "**/dist" --ignore "**/node_modules/**"

# Multiple ignore patterns
$ poof "**/*.log" -i "**/important/**" -i "**/backup/**"

Dotfiles (hidden files)

By default, glob wildcards (*, **) don't match dotfiles (files starting with .). This helps avoid accidentally deleting .git, .env, or other hidden files.

To target dotfiles, explicitly include the . in your pattern:

# Delete all dotfiles in current directory
$ poof ".*"

# Delete .cache directories (not inside hidden dirs)
$ poof "**/.cache"

# Delete a specific dotfile
$ poof .env.local

Searching inside hidden directories

**/.cache finds .cache directories in regular directories, but does not scan inside other hidden directories like .git. This is intentional—scanning hidden directories is slow and rarely useful.

To search inside hidden directories, start your pattern with .*:

# Find .cache inside any hidden directory
$ poof ".*/**/.cache"

Or use brace expansion to target specific directories:

# Search inside .config and src
$ poof "{.config,src}/**/.cache"

Negation patterns

Extglob negations like !(pattern) match everything except the specified pattern:

# Delete everything except .gitkeep
$ poof "!(.gitkeep)"

[!WARNING] Negations match dotfiles. !(important.txt) will match .env, .git, and other hidden files. Always use --dry first.

Safety

poof includes guards to help prevent common accidents:

• Root protection: refuses to delete the filesystem root
• Directory scoping: won't delete paths outside cwd unless --dangerous is passed
• Typo protection: explicit paths that don't exist are reported as errors, so poof ndoe_modoules won't silently succeed
• Script-friendly globs: glob patterns with no matches exit silently, so poof "*.log" won't break your scripts

How it works

Traditional rm -rf blocks until every file is unlinked. For large directories, this means waiting on thousands of filesystem operations.

poof uses a different strategy:

• Resolve glob patterns and validate paths
• Spawn a detached cleanup process
• Rename files to a temp directory (constant-time, atomic)
• Stream renamed paths to the cleanup process as renames complete
• Exit process to return your shell while cleanup process continues in the background

Cross-device fallback

If the target is on a different filesystem (EXDEV), poof falls back to renaming in place with a hidden prefix (e.g., .poof-uuid-large-directory) and streams it directly to the cleaner.

Benchmarks

Deleting **/node_modules directories from a synthetic fixture:

Tool	Time	vs poof
poof	0.59s	—
rimraf	12.32s	21x slower
rm -rf	27.82s	48x slower

Fixture: 4.7 GB, 190k files

Environment: macOS 15.2, Apple M2 Max, SSD

[!NOTE] These benchmarks measure how long it takes to return control of your terminal, not actual deletion time. Background deletion continues after poof exits. rm -rf and rimraf measure actual deletion time.

JS API

poof can also be used programmatically:

import poof from 'poof'

await poof('./large-directory')
await poof(['**/dist', 'coverage'])

const { deleted, errors } = await poof('./large-directory', { dry: true })

Types

type Options = {
    cwd?: string
    dry?: boolean
    dangerous?: boolean
    ignore?: string[]
}

type Failure = {
    path: string
    error: Error
}

type Result = {
    deleted: string[]
    errors: Failure[]
}

Alternatives

Some tools provide fast, non-blocking removal by moving files to the system trash:

• trash (macOS)
• trash-cli (cross-platform)

These are useful for recoverable deletes, but large directories can accumulate in the trash and consume disk space.

poof permanently deletes files, freeing space immediately.

Requirements

Node.js >= 20.19.6

License

MIT