How to remove all files from a directory?

To remove all the contents from a directory, you need to ask yourself:

Do I want to remove everything including the directory itself?

To remove a directory with all its contents (including all interior folders):

rm -rf /path/to/directory

Do I want to keep the directory, but delete everything else?

Need to remove all the contents of the directory (including all interior directories) but not the directory itself:

rm -rf /path/to/directory/*

What about the hidden files and directories?

Wanting to make sure that hidden files/directories are also removed:

rm -rf /path/to/directory/{*,.*}

Want to remove the files only?

To remove all the "files" from inside a directory(not removing interior directories):

rm -f /path/to/directory/{*,.*}

Spaces in the directory names

Note: if you have spaces in your path, make sure to always use quotes.

rm -rf "/path/to the/directory/"*

is equivalent to 2 separate rm -rf calls:

rm -rf /path/to
rm -rf the/directory/*

To avoid this issue, you can use 'single-quotes'(prevents all expansions, even of shell variables) or "double-quotes"(allows expansion of shell variables, but prevents other expansions):

rm -rf "/path/to the/directory/"*

Where:

rm :: stands for remove
-f :: stands for force which is helpful when you don't want to be asked/prompted if you want to remove an archive
-r :: stands for recursive which means that you want to go recursively down every folder and remove everything