Unix: How to delete files listed in a file

Question

I have a long text file with list of file masks I want to delete

Example:

/tmp/aaa.jpg
/var/www1/*
/var/www/qwerty.php

I need delet

Answer 1

Use this:

while IFS= read -r file ; do rm -- "$file" ; done < delete.list

If you need glob expansion you can omit quoting $file:

IFS=""
while read -r file ; do rm -- $file ; done < delete.list

But be warned that file names can contain "problematic" content and I would use the unquoted version. Imagine this pattern in the file

*
*/*
*/*/*

This would delete quite a lot from the current directory! I would encourage you to prepare the delete list in a way that glob patterns aren't required anymore, and then use quoting like in my first example.