Ubuntu – Delete files and folders with specific name from a certain directory

command line

I have a folder /home/userA/folderA this folder contains many files and folders and subfolders. What I want to do is to delete all files that have certain names data.txt and glass.txt. I also want to delete any folder named match with all its contents. I'd be thankful for any advice in how to do this.

Best Answer

You can delete the files and folders in the subdirectories of folderA.

To remove the files, run:

find /home/userA/folderA/* -type f \( -name "data.txt" -or -name "glass.txt" \) -delete

and to remove the folders match:

find /home/userA/folderA/* -depth -name "match" -type d -exec rm -rf "{}" \;

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Copy files from a directory to a sub-directory (excluding the sub-directory itself)

Assuming you are using bash as your interactive shell, you can enable extglob which allows you to specify "all files except these ones".

shopt -s extglob
cd Parent
cp !(Child1) Child1/

Ubuntu – How to delete all folders of a specific name without deleting Contents in it

Create a simple script with following contents

#!/bin/bash

while IFS= read -r -d '' n; 
do   
   dir=$(dirname "$n") ; 
   mv "${n}"/* "${dir}"
   rmdir "${n}"
done < <(find -type d -name "128Kbps_Songs" -print0)

Save it and make it executable using chmod +x your_script

Now run it using ./your_script

Here IFS= is done to preserve the space in the filename or path.

-r - disables interpretion of backslash escapes and line-continuation in the read data.
-d - recognize delimiter as data-end. Here it is emptying out the IFS
dirname is use to remove the last folder name i.e 128Kbps_Songs from the find command output. (from ./temp/MP3_SONGS/128Kbps_Songs to ./temp/MP3_SONGS)

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Copy files from a directory to a sub-directory (excluding the sub-directory itself)

Ubuntu – How to delete all folders of a specific name without deleting Contents in it

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