I want to know how I can remove all the files in a directory say directory1 contains some 100 files. I just want to remove the files and not the directory.
I know that rmdir directory1 will remove directory1 completely. But I want to only remove all the files inside.
Try this:
rm /path/to/directory1/*
by adding the -r option you can additionally remove contained directories and their content recursively.
find /path/to/directory1 -type f | xargs rm -f
This recursively deletes all normal files in the directory.
Related
Lets say i have a folder named Pictures and I want to move or copy all files out of this folder.
However I also want to move and harvest all of the files who are in sub folders so:
Pictures/1.png
Pictures/yolo/2.png
Pictures/yolo/swag/sand/3.png
Pictures/extra/fire/4.png
I want to move or copy all these files to another folder like results so I get:
results/1.png
results/2.png
results/3.png
results/4.png
Only I have no idea in advance what sub folders will be in the Pictures folder.
How can I accomplish this in bash/shell scripts ?
I also appreciate making it file type neutral so any files are harvested from their directories (not only .png like in my example) and I have no idea what the file name will be (I only used 1...4 because i did not have any idea how to name them).
You can do it like this:
find /absolute/path/to/Pictures -type f -name '*.png' -exec mv -i {} /absolute/path/to/results \;
Another option is to use xargs
find /absolute/path/to/Pictures -name '*.png' | xargs -I files mv files /absolute/path/to/results
You can simply copy all files and subdirectories along with their contents using cp's recursive option:
cp -pr <source_path>/* <destination_path>/
But, moving them recursively is a bit tricky, you will need to create tar files of the subdirectories and move them and then untar the tar files in destination path. As this is a complex process, as a workaround, you can copy the files/directories recursively and then delete the files from original path.
cp -pr <source_path>/* <destination_path>/ && rm -rf <source_path>/*
I have a directory structure as :-
/usr/testing/member/
---> public--->folder1--->file1
\----> file2
---> folder3:- contains files and folders
---> folder4:- contains files and folders
---> several files
I want to keep the public folder and all its contents (further folders and files within it) but want to delete everything else under the directory /usr/testing/member/. But that also means member folder is not deleted.
Is there any shell script or command that can be used to achieve this exactly as i stated.
Here's one way to do it:
(cd /usr/testing/member; find . -maxdepth 1 \( ! -name . -a ! -name public \) -exec echo rm -fr {} +)
That is: cd into /usr/testing/member, find all files and directories there, without going further below, and exclude the current directory (".") and any file or directory named "public", and execute a command for the found files.
This will print what would be deleted.
Verify it looks good, and then drop the echo.
I think below will do the work,
$ cd /usr/testing/member/
$ rm -rf $(ls | grep -v "public")
explanation:
we are passing everything inside /usr/testing/member/ but public to rm by making use of -v(exclude) option of grep
I'm trying write a script in linux. Where I have some csv files in Two different folders(A and B) and then after some processing copy of rejected files are moving to Bad Folder.
SO I want bad files to be deleted from Table A and B which have copied to Bad Folder.
Can you help me to write this script for linux?
Best
lets say name of Bad Folder is 'badFolder' and considering 'A', 'B' and 'badFolder' are in same directory
Steps to delete files from folder A and B:
step 1: change current directory to your 'badFolder'
cd badFolder
step 2: delete identical files
find . -type f -exec rm -f ../A/{} \;
find . -type f -exec rm -f ../B/{} \;
The argument -type f tells to look for files, not directories.
The -exec ... \; argument tells that, once it finds a file in 'badFolder', it should run the command rm -f on its counterpart in the A subdirectory.
Because rm is given with the -f option, it will silently ignore files that don't exist.
Also, it will not prompt before deleting files. This is very handy when deleting a large number of files. However, be sure that you really want to delete the files before running this script.
#!/bin/bash
#Set the working folder in which you want to delete the file
Working_folder=/<Folder>/<path>
cd $Working_folder
#command to delete all files present in folders
rm <filenames seperated by space>
echo "files are deleted"
#if you want to delete all files you can use wild card character
# e.g. command rm *.*
# if you want to delete a particular file say for deleting .csv file you can use command rm *.csv command
Set variables containing the paths of your A, B and BAD directories.
Then you can do something along the lines of
for file in ls ${PATH_TO_BAD}
do
rm ${PATH_TO_A}/$file
rm ${PATH_TO_B}/$file
done
This is iterating over the BAD directory and any file it finds, it deletes from the A and B directories.
I'm trying to backup my www-folder but hidden folders like .config inside www are added to the backup. I want to exclude the folder "backups" and all folders (and files) starting with a dot.
The problem is that it copies all the hidden folders like .config to the zip-file.
Current code:
zip -r /var/www/backups/site/$(date +\%Y-\%m-\%d-\%H-\%M).zip /var/www -x "*backups*" "*.*" "*/.*"
This should work for you.
zip -r --exclude=*backups* --exclude=*/.* /var/www/backups/site/$(date +\%Y-\%m-\%d-\%H-\%M).zip /var/www
Use a linux find command with an exclude flag, then pipe it into zip.
The following command will exclude all paths under the current directory containing the keywords "backups" or files with "/." in the path and then pipe the files into zip.
find . | grep -v "\(backups\|/\.\)" | xargs zip archive.zip
I have two directories and one is empty.
The first directory has many sub directories with hidden files. When I cp -r content from first directory to the second one, the hidden files gets copied too. Any solutions to escape them?
You can use rsync instead of cp:
rsync -av --exclude=".*" src dest
This excludes hidden files and directories. If you only want to exclude hidden directories, add a slash to the pattern:
rsync -av --exclude=".*/" src dest
You can do
cp -r SRC_DIR/* DEST_DIR
to exclude all .files and .dirs in the SRC_DIR level, but still it would copy any hidden files in the next level of sub-directories.
rsync has "-C" option
http://rsync.samba.org/ftp/rsync/rsync.html
Example:
rsync -vazC dir1 dir2
I came across the same need when I wanted to copy the files contained in a git repo, but excluding the .git folder, while using git bash.
If you don't have access to rsync, you can replicate the behavior of --exclude=".*" by using the find command along with xargs:
find ./src_dir -type f -not -path '*/.*' | xargs cp --parents -t ./dest_dir
To give more details:
find ./src_dir -type f -not -path '*/.*' will find all files in src_dir excluding the ones where the path contain a . at the beginning of a file or folder.
xargs cp --parents -t ./dest_dir will copy the files found to dest_dir, recreating the folder hierarchy thanks to the --parents argument.
Note: This will not copy empty folders. And will effectively exclude all hidden files and folders from being copied.
Link to relevant doc:
https://linux.die.net/man/1/cp
https://linux.die.net/man/1/find