Remove all files except some from a directory

Question

When using sudo rm -r, how can I delete all files, with the exception of the following:

textfile.txt
backup.tar.gz
script.php
database.sql
info.         


        

Answer 1

If you're using zsh which I highly recommend.

rm -rf ^file/folder pattern to avoid

With extended_glob

setopt extended_glob
rm -- ^*.txt
rm -- ^*.(sql|txt)

Answer 2

A little late for the OP, but hopefully useful for anyone who gets here much later by google...

I found the answer by @awi and comment on -delete by @Jamie Bullock really useful. A simple utility so you can do this in different directories ignoring different file names/types each time with minimal typing:

rm_except (or whatever you want to name it)

#!/bin/bash

ignore=""

for fignore in "$@"; do
  ignore=${ignore}"-not -name ${fignore} "
done

find . -type f $ignore -delete

e.g. to delete everything except for text files and foo.bar:

rm_except *.txt foo.bar 

Similar to @mishunika, but without the if clause.

Answer 3

find [path] -type f -not -name 'textfile.txt' -not -name 'backup.tar.gz' -delete

If you don't specify -type f find will also list directories, which you may not want.

---

Or a more general solution using the very useful combination find | xargs:

find [path] -type f -not -name 'EXPR' -print0 | xargs -0 rm --

for example, delete all non txt-files in the current directory:

find . -type f -not -name '*txt' -print0 | xargs -0 rm --

The print0 and -0 combination is needed if there are spaces in any of the filenames that should be deleted.

Answer 4

This is similar to the comment from @siwei-shen but you need the -o flag to do multiple patterns. The -o flag stands for 'or'

find . -type f -not -name '*ignore1' -o -not -name '*ignore2' | xargs rm

Answer 5

Remove everything exclude file.name:

ls -d /path/to/your/files/* |grep -v file.name|xargs rm -rf

Answer 6

Make the files immutable. Not even root will be allowed to delete them.

chattr +i textfile.txt backup.tar.gz script.php database.sql info.txt
rm *

All other files have been deleted.
Eventually you can reset them mutable.

chattr -i *