Linux – How to Delete All Files in a Directory Except Some

bashlinuxrm

I need to delete all files in a directory, but exclude some of them. For example, in a directory with the files a b c ... z, I need to delete all except for u and p. Is there an easy way to do this?

Best Answer

What I do in those cases is to type

rm *

Then I press Ctrl+X,* to expand * into all visible file names.

Then I can just remove the two files I like to keep from the list and finally execute the command line.

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Ubuntu, delete all files that start with ‘._’

You can try this:

find -name ._\* |xargs sudo rm -Rvi

or if your shell doesn't like that:

find |grep -e '^\._' | xargs sudo rm -Rvi

find without any arguments should just list everything.

Linux – How to remove all files from a directory that have a certain filename length

You can use the ? wildcard to represent a single character.

So something like rm ?????? should remove all files with file names 6 characters long.

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Related Solutions

Ubuntu, delete all files that start with ‘._’

Linux – How to remove all files from a directory that have a certain filename length

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