Mac Terminal – How to Delete Files in a Directory That Match a Regexp

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How do I delete files in a directory that match a given regexp, or a similar solution, using a Mac terminal?

Best Answer

Use the find command.

Find all files (recursively) matching a regex: find . -type f -regex '/ex/'
Find all files (recursively) matching a regex and delete them: find . -type f -regex '/ex/' -exec rm {} \;

The brackets store the found pathname, and the backslash escapes the semicolon because it's passed to find; without escaping it, it would be consumed by the shell. If that went over your head, read the first two chapters of "Learning the Bash Shell".

Check the man pages for find for more options. There are a lot more ways to search.

Related Solutions

Shell – How to delete everything in a directory

Simple and straight forward:

find -delete

Includes directories and hidden files. At least gnu-find knows -delete, your find may differ.

Get the number of files that match a pattern in a directory and delete the oldest one

There's no direct way to count files matching a pattern, but you can do it in two easy steps: generate the list of files, and take the length of the list. Assuming the date is in YYYYMMDD form (note that this clobbers the positional parameters):

set ExtractBackup_[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9].tar.gz
if [ -e "$1" ]; then count=$#; else count=0; fi

In ksh93, you can make the count easier by making the list be empty if no file matches. Portably, a pattern that doesn't match any file is replaced by a list containing one word which is the pattern itself; ksh93 has a construct to have the pattern expand to an empty list instead. Ksh has arrays, which means you don't need to clobber the positional parameters.

backups=(~(N:ExtractBackup_[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9].tar.gz))
count=${#backups[@]}

If the date is in YYYYMMDD form, then the oldest file is the first in the list.

set ExtractBackup_[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9].tar.gz
if [ $# -ge 2 ]; then rm "$1"; fi

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Shell – How to delete everything in a directory

Get the number of files that match a pattern in a directory and delete the oldest one

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