Change it to "how to delete the contents of a directory, but keep the directory itself" and it becomes less simple.
But even this can lead to an interesting discussion. From a CLI, there's quite a few things to consider. Do you need sudo? If not, you shouldn't use it, IMO. Is the directory name dangerous? If so, would rm -rf -- help? Does rm support -- as an argument at all? I wouldn't know. And would it always prevent problems, even with truly weird directory names (with spaces, asterisks, slashes, $HOME, unbalanced quotes)? Of course you shell should tab-complete names and correctly escape them, but should you check your shell (brand and version) first if the name is weird, and know what versions have a known problem?
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Change it to "how to delete the contents of a directory, but keep the directory itself" and it becomes less simple.
But even this can lead to an interesting discussion. From a CLI, there's quite a few things to consider. Do you need sudo? If not, you shouldn't use it, IMO. Is the directory name dangerous? If so, would rm -rf -- help? Does rm support -- as an argument at all? I wouldn't know. And would it always prevent problems, even with truly weird directory names (with spaces, asterisks, slashes, $HOME, unbalanced quotes)? Of course you shell should tab-complete names and correctly escape them, but should you check your shell (brand and version) first if the name is weird, and know what versions have a known problem?