Using find - Deleting all files/directories (in Linux ) except any one

Question

If we want to delete all files and directories we use, rm -rf *.

But what if i want all files and directories be deleted at a shot, except one particular fi

Answer 1

find can be a very good friend:

$ ls
a/  b/  c/
$ find * -maxdepth 0 -name 'b' -prune -o -exec rm -rf '{}' ';'
$ ls
b/
$ 

Explanation:

• find * -maxdepth 0: select everything selected by * without descending into any directories

• -name 'b' -prune: do not bother (-prune) with anything that matches the condition -name 'b'

• -o -exec rm -rf '{}' ';': call rm -rf for everything else

By the way, another, possibly simpler, way would be to move or rename your favourite directory so that it is not in the way:

$ ls
a/  b/  c/
$ mv b .b
$ ls
a/  c/
$ rm -rf *
$ mv .b b
$ ls
b/

Answer 2

If it's just one file, one simple way is to move that file to /tmp or something, rm -Rf the directory and then move it back. You could alias this as a simple command.

The other option is to do a find and then grep out what you don't want (using -v or directly using one of finds predicates) and then rming the remaining files.

For a single file, I'd do the former. For anything more, I'd write something custom similar to what thkala said.

Answer 3

cd ..
ln trash/useful.file ./
rm -rf trash/*
mv useful.file trash/

Answer 4

Short answer

ls | grep -v "z.txt" | xargs rm

Details:

The thought process for the above command is :

• List all files (ls)
• Ignore one file named "z.txt" (grep -v "z.txt")
• Delete the listed files other than z.txt (xargs rm)

Example

Create 5 files as shown below:

echo "a.txt b.txt c.txt d.txt z.txt" | xargs touch

List all files except z.txt

ls|grep -v "z.txt"

a.txt
b.txt
c.txt
d.txt

We can now delete(rm) the listed files by using the xargs utility :

ls|grep -v "z.txt"|xargs rm

Answer 5

In bash you have the !() glob operator, which inverts the matched pattern. So to delete everything except the file my_file_name.txt, try this:

shopt -s extglob
rm -f !(my_file_name.txt)

See this article for more details: http://karper.wordpress.com/2010/11/17/deleting-all-files-in-a-directory-with-exceptions/

Answer 6

I don't know of such a program, but I have wanted it in the past for some times. The basic syntax would be:

IFS='
' for f in $(except "*.c" "*.h" -- *); do
  printf '%s\n' "$f"
done

The program I have in mind has three modes:

• exact matching (with the option -e)
• glob matching (default, like shown in the above example)
• regex matching (with the option -r)

It takes the patterns to be excluded from the command line, followed by the separator --, followed by the file names. Alternatively, the file names might be read from stdin (if the option -s is given), each on a line.

Such a program should not be hard to write, in either C or the Shell Command Language. And it makes a good excercise for learning the Unix basics. When you do it as a shell program, you have to watch for filenames containing whitespace and other special characters, of course.