bash shell wildcards – How to Delete All Files Except *.txt in Linux

bashshellwildcards

I know how to delete all txt file under current directory by rm *.txt.
Does anyone know how to delete all files in current directory EXCEPT txt file?

Best Answer

You can use find:

find . -type f ! -name '*.txt' -delete

Or bash's extended globbing features:

shopt -s extglob
rm *.!(txt)

Or in zsh:

setopt extendedglob
rm *~*.txt(.)
#  ||     ^^^ Only plain files
#  ||^^^^^ files ending in ".txt"
#  | \Except
#   \Everything

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files=()
while read -r -d $'\0'; do
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done < <(find *.txt -print0)

There is a detailed explanation of arrays on the page that breaks this construct down element by element; it is well worth reading in full.

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These commands didn't work because wildcard patterns omit dot files (files whose name begins with the character .) unless the dot appears explicitly in the pattern. So *.un~ matches yourfile.txt.un~ but not .myfile.txt.un~, whereas .*.un~ does match .myfile.txt.un~.

You should be able to use find(1) for this (find wildcard matching doesn't treat dot files specially):

find / -name "*.un~" -not -path "~/.tmp/*" -delete

That tells find to search / for all files matching *.un~ that aren't in ~/.tmp and delete them. If you take off -delete it will just output a list, so you can check and make sure it's not going to delete the wrong things. You also might want to throw -mount in there to stop it from searching other filesystems you have mounted

Best Answer

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