Question

19

Delete all files except specified files/folders using command line?

rated 0 times [ 19] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 3883 / 1 Year ago, tue, january 10, 2023, 1:14:28

I have a folder containing a lot of folders and different files with the following structures :

NASA

│

├── a

│   ├── doc1

│   ├── doc2

│   ├── doc3

│   ├── folder1

│   └── folder2

│

├── b

│   ├── doc1

│   ├── doc2

│   ├── doc3

│   ├── folder1

│   └── folder2

│

├── c

│   ├── doc1

│   ├── doc2

│   ├── doc3

│   ├── folder1

│   └── folder2

│

├─ x

├─ y

└─ z

I want to delete the content of the folder (NASA/) except specified folders and files.

For example I want to keep a folder, b folder and x file.

I tried this solution
:

 rm !(a/) -r NASA/

And (as explained in the answer here):

find NASA/ -type f ! -iname "x" -delete

But this is not very straight forward and I have to use a bash script.

Am I missing a more easy way ? How can I do this in a single command?

Answers

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bathtusain

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2 Years ago

answered 1 Year ago ormlai · Accepted Answer

You can use GLOBIGNORE to set the names that will be ignored while globbing and then use * to match all other files/directories:

GLOBIGNORE='a:b:x'; rm -r *

Example:

$ tree 

.

├── a

│   ├── 1

│   ├── 2

│   └── 3

├── b

│   ├── 1

│   ├── 2

│   └── 3

├── c

│   ├── 1

│   ├── 2

│   └── 3

├── x

├── y

└── z



/NASA$ GLOBIGNORE='a:b:x'



/NASA$ rm -r *



/NASA$ tree 

.

├── a

│   ├── 1

│   ├── 2

│   └── 3

├── b

│   ├── 1

│   ├── 2

│   └── 3

└── x

Alternately, you can use find, from the NASA directory:

find . -maxdepth 1 ! -name '.' ! -regex '.*/(a|b|x)$' -exec rm -r {} +

Example:

/NASA$ tree 

.

├── a

│   ├── 1

│   ├── 2

│   └── 3

├── b

│   ├── 1

│   ├── 2

│   └── 3

├── c

│   ├── 1

│   ├── 2

│   └── 3

├── x

├── y

└── z





/NASA$ find . -maxdepth 1 ! -name '.' ! -regex '.*/(a|b|x)$' -exec rm -r {} +





/NASA$ tree 

.

├── a

│   ├── 1

│   ├── 2

│   └── 3

├── b

│   ├── 1

│   ├── 2

│   └── 3

└── x