Remove all files except some from a directory

Question

When using sudo rm -r, how can I delete all files, with the exception of the following:

textfile.txt
backup.tar.gz
script.php
database.sql
info.txt

Rosenblast

Sounds like a question for unix.stackexchange.com – Insistency

There are 2 ways to read this question, and the existing answers cover both interpretations: EITHER: (a) preserve files with the specified names directly located in the target directory and - as rm -r implies - delete everything else, including subdirectories - even if they contain files with the specified names; OR: (b) traverse the entire subtree of the target directory and, in each directory, delete all files except those with the names listed. – Fleabane

To everyone doing this, please make a backup first. I've just wasted several days worth of work because I forgot to exclude .git, and not having pushed, I was unable to recover over 30 commits. Make sure you exclude everything you care about, hidden folders included. And set -maxdepth 1 if you're dealing with directories. – Ishmael

@Insistency Remove all files/directories except for one file - Unix & Linux Stack Exchange – Stroganoff

Answer 1

find [path] -type f -not -name 'textfile.txt' -not -name 'backup.tar.gz' -delete

If you don't specify -type f find will also list directories, which you may not want.

---

Or a more general solution using the very useful combination find | xargs:

find [path] -type f -not -name 'EXPR' -print0 | xargs -0 rm --

for example, delete all non txt-files in the current directory:

find . -type f -not -name '*txt' -print0 | xargs -0 rm --

The print0 and -0 combination is needed if there are spaces in any of the filenames that should be deleted.

Princely

it seems xargs has a text size limit – Fagan

to delete multiple patterns : find . -type f -not -name '*ignore1' -not -name '*ignore2' | xargs rm – Own

what about directories? it will delete all files, but does it remove folders?! – Drayman

@emab: It will not delete directories, that's what the "-type f" does. – Aerolite

Instead of "| xargs rm", find takes a -delete parameter. – Aerolite

Another couple of items that will reduce (probably) unwanted side effects: add -not -name ".*" -maxdepth 1 to protect configuration and version control metadata. – Solecism

it might be worth adding a -f after the rm, (ie. rm -f --) as this command throws a rm: missing operand error otherwise which may be problematic if the command is used in a script. – Cyperaceous

instead of -print0 | xargs -0 rm -- you can just -delete – Nonah

maybe somebody could make a bash function to remove everything except the arguments given and add it to the .bashrc. for example rme textfile.txt backup.tar.gz – Esquibel

using -delete but removing -type f is actually really handy, because it deletes all directories which end up empty from deleting the files, but keeps the ones that happen to have your kept files in them – Nitrous

Answer 2

rm !(textfile.txt|backup.tar.gz|script.php|database.sql|info.txt)

The extglob (Extended Pattern Matching) needs to be enabled in BASH (if it's not enabled):

shopt -s extglob

Predation

I get "syntax error near unexpected token `('" when I do shopt -s extglob; rm -rf !(README|LICENSE). Any idea why? – Alarice

@nic I don't remember, sorry. I probably ended up using find with the -delete option. – Alarice

This is the best solution for me and it works by default on my Ubuntu 12.04.4 LTS with no need for shopt – Bravo

@xtian: extglob is OFF by default, so if you find it's on already, something must have turned it on, such as your bash profile (either directly or by sourcing a script that turns it on, which happens with careless 3rd-party scripts). – Fleabane

@nic, @Dennis: The syntax error suggests that something OTHER than bash was used, e.g., dash, where extglob is not supported. However, in an interactive bash shell, the command will ALSO not work as stated, though for different reasons. The short of it: execute shopt -s extglob BY ITSELF; ONCE SUCCESSFULLY ENABLED (verify with shopt extglob), execute rm -rf !(README|LICENSE). (While extglob is not yet enabled, !(...) is evaluated by history expansion BEFORE the commands are executed; since this likely fails, NEITHER command is executed, and extglob is never turned on.) – Fleabane

@nic, @Dennis, @mklement0: I had the same issue with "syntax error near unexpected token (" when executing the command within a .sh file (#! /bin/bash) but not when I was running it in a command line interface. It turned out that in addition to the shopt -s extglob run in the command line interface, I had to rerun it inside my script file. This solved the problem for me. – Khan

if someone would like to combine it, it's not always good idea. rm -rf * .* !(src/|lost+found/) <-- it didn't work as I expect, it deleted everything ;) – Ocher

Deleted everything for me on OSX/zsh – Damnedest

This works perfectly as long as there is only one of these. If I try to use two, the second one does not work, but gives weird paths with /./ in the middle. – Diaphaneity

Answer 3

find . | grep -v "excluded files criteria" | xargs rm

This will list all files in current directory, then list all those that don't match your criteria (beware of it matching directory names) and then remove them.

Update: based on your edit, if you really want to delete everything from current directory except files you listed, this can be used:

mkdir /tmp_backup && mv textfile.txt backup.tar.gz script.php database.sql info.txt /tmp_backup/ && rm -r && mv /tmp_backup/* . && rmdir /tmp_backup

It will create a backup directory /tmp_backup (you've got root privileges, right?), move files you listed to that directory, delete recursively everything in current directory (you know that you're in the right directory, do you?), move back to current directory everything from /tmp_backup and finally, delete /tmp_backup.

I choose the backup directory to be in root, because if you're trying to delete everything recursively from root, your system will have big problems.

Surely there are more elegant ways to do this, but this one is pretty straightforward.

Fauna

Works also really well with egrep, e.g. for cleaning intermediate latex files: find . | egrep -v "\.tex|\.bib" | xargs rm – Illuminant

amazing command! for removing directories just change to rm -r – Hebdomadal

If you want to simply delete everything in the current directory other than the excluded criteria: find . -maxdepth 1 | grep -v "exclude these" | xargs rm -r works much faster as it doesn't need to drill down in to directories unnecessarily. – Cano

Re find pipeline: efficiency issues aside (3 commands are used for what find could do alone), this will not work as intended with filenames with embedded spaces and will potentially delete the wrong files. – Fleabane

A command that stores "to-be-saved" files in another location (/tmp_backup) doesn't end well if it's interrupted—from the user's perspective, all the files have vanished, unless they know where to go looking for them to get them back. For that reason I'm not in favour of this type of strategy. – Gleeson

Answer 4

I prefer to use sub query list:

rm -r `ls | grep -v "textfile.txt\|backup.tar.gz\|script.php\|database.sql\|info.txt"`

-v, --invert-match select non-matching lines

\| Separator

To avoid preserving files with similar names:

rm -r `ls | grep -v "^textfile.txt$\|^backup.tar.gz$"`

Coyle

Elegant solution – Poriferous

My favorite solution here ;) – Monjo

This is really error prone. e.g. it will preserve files named old-textfile.txt, etc. – Downfall

@istepaniuk, Good point! I've updated with an advanced usage. – Coyle

And if I want to do it the other way around, say preserve the matching files? Removing the -v gives rm: missing operand – Indopacific

Answer 5

Assuming that files with those names exist in multiple places in the directory tree and you want to preserve all of them:

find . -type f ! -regex ".*/\(textfile.txt\|backup.tar.gz\|script.php\|database.sql\|info.txt\)" -delete

Mossgrown

Answer 6

You can use GLOBIGNORE environment variable in Bash.

Suppose you want to delete all files except php and sql, then you can do the following -

export GLOBIGNORE=*.php:*.sql
rm *
export GLOBIGNORE=

Setting GLOBIGNORE like this ignores php and sql from wildcards used like "ls *" or "rm *". So, using "rm *" after setting the variable will delete only txt and tar.gz file.

Tum

+1; A simpler alternative to setting and restoring the GLOBIGNORE variable is to use a subshell: (GLOBIGNORE='*.php:*.sql'; rm *) – Fleabane

Answer 7

Since nobody mentioned it:

• copy the files you don't want to delete in a safe place
• delete all the files
• move the copied files back in place

Lookeron

It is more complicate because you have to take care of permissions after you copy them back. – Susie

@RemusAvram You can use appropriate switches with cp or rsync to preserve permissions. Anyways, this is just an alternate method (given as a suggestion) that has its place here, as an answer to the OP. – Lookeron

This may not be appropriate in many situations wherein the files to be retained are actively being used by other processes. It is also cumbersome of the files to be removed are just a small subset and a large number of files are involved. – Benjy

@codeforester: sure. But there are situations where it's appropriate, though... in fact I don't really see the point of your comment :). – Lookeron

Answer 8

You can write a for loop for this... %)

for x in *
do
        if [ "$x" != "exclude_criteria" ]
        then
                rm -f $x;
        fi
done;

Froebel

Answer 9

A little late for the OP, but hopefully useful for anyone who gets here much later by google...

I found the answer by @awi and comment on -delete by @Jamie Bullock really useful. A simple utility so you can do this in different directories ignoring different file names/types each time with minimal typing:

rm_except (or whatever you want to name it)

#!/bin/bash

ignore=""

for fignore in "$@"; do
  ignore=${ignore}"-not -name ${fignore} "
done

find . -type f $ignore -delete

e.g. to delete everything except for text files and foo.bar:

rm_except *.txt foo.bar 

Similar to @mishunika, but without the if clause.

Naphthyl

Answer 10

If you're using zsh which I highly recommend.

rm -rf ^file/folder pattern to avoid

With extended_glob

setopt extended_glob
rm -- ^*.txt
rm -- ^*.(sql|txt)

Cryogen

Answer 11

Trying it worked with:

rm -r !(Applications|"Virtualbox VMs"|Downloads|Documents|Desktop|Public)

but names with spaces are (as always) tough. Tried also with Virtualbox\ VMs instead the quotes. It deletes always that directory (Virtualbox VMs).

Vagabondage

Does NOT work for files. rm !(myfile.txt) removes all including myfile.txt – Tolley

should execute shopt -s extglob first as @Predation pointed out – Minyan

Yes, it's very important to activate extended globbing (extglob) in bash, I am doing this in a daily routine basis, over a few Macs in labs: shopt -s extglob and then cd /Users/alumno/ and finally rm -rf !(Applications|Virtualbox*VMs|Downloads|Documents|Desktop|Public|Library) Read about extended globbing here – Vagabondage

Answer 12

Just:

rm $(ls -I "*.txt" ) #Deletes file type except *.txt

Or:

rm $(ls -I "*.txt" -I "*.pdf" ) #Deletes file types except *.txt & *.pdf

Preoccupy

This is not recommended. Parsing ls output can become a problem is. See Here for detailed information. – Greenroom

Answer 13

Make the files immutable. Not even root will be allowed to delete them.

chattr +i textfile.txt backup.tar.gz script.php database.sql info.txt
rm *

All other files have been deleted.
Eventually you can reset them mutable.

chattr -i *

Doggoned

Answer 14

I belive you can use

rm -v !(filename)

Except for the filename all the other files will e deleted in the directory and make sure you are using it in

Outdistance

Use this below command this works for me. find . -type f \! -name 'filepattern' -print0 | xargs --null rm -f – Outdistance

This option only works with the extglob shell option enabled, i.e: $ shopt -s extglob – Dayledaylight

Answer 15

This is similar to the comment from @siwei-shen but you need the -o flag to do multiple patterns. The -o flag stands for 'or'

find . -type f -not -name '*ignore1' -o -not -name '*ignore2' | xargs rm

Cresa

Answer 16

You can do this with two command sequences. First define an array with the name of the files you do not want to exclude:

files=( backup.tar.gz script.php database.sql info.txt )

After that, loop through all files in the directory you want to exclude, checking if the filename is in the array you don't want to exclude; if its not then delete the file.

for file in *; do
  if [[ ! " ${files[@]} " ~= "$file"  ]];then
    rm "$file"
  fi
done

Cobol

The regex comparison is incorrect -- it will preserve any file whose name is a substring of one of the protected files (though the surrounding spaces somewhat mitigate that; but file names can contain spaces). You should collect an array of all files, then subtract the files you want to exclude from that array, then remove the remaining files. – Kaplan

Answer 17

The answer I was looking for was to run script, but I wanted to avoid deleting the sript itself. So incase someone is looking for a similar answer, do the following.

Create a .sh file and write the following code:

    cp my_run_build.sh ../../ 
    rm -rf * cp  
    ../../my_run_build.sh . 
    /*amend rest of the script*/

Jaela

Answer 18

Since no one yet mentioned this, in one particular case:

OLD_FILES=`echo *`
... create new files ...
rm -r $OLD_FILES

(or just rm $OLD_FILES)

or

OLD_FILES=`ls *`
... create new files ...
rm -r $OLD_FILES

You may need to use shopt -s nullglob if some files may be either there or not there:

SET_OLD_NULLGLOB=`shopt -p nullglob`
shopt -s nullglob
FILES=`echo *.sh *.bash`
$SET_OLD_NULLGLOB

without nullglob, echo *.sh *.bash may give you "a.sh b.sh *.bash".

(Having said all that, I myself prefer this answer, even though it does not work in OSX)

Barahona

The existing answer by Leonardo Hermoso does this with fewer bugs. This will fail for file names with spaces; using an array elegantly solves that particular problem (and also less crucially avoids using uppercase for his private variables, which is generally to be avoided). – Kaplan

Answer 19

Rather than going for a direct command, please move required files to temp dir outside current dir. Then delete all files using rm * or rm -r *.

Then move required files to current dir.

Hydrocortisone

This may not be appropriate in many situations wherein the files to be retained are actively being used by other processes. It is also cumbersome of the files to be removed are just a small subset and a large number of files are involved. – Benjy

Answer 20

Remove everything exclude file.name:

ls -d /path/to/your/files/* |grep -v file.name|xargs rm -rf

Gazetteer

This will fail horribly and might cause data loss if your directory/files have spaces or unusual characters. You should never parse ls. mywiki.wooledge.org/ParsingLs – Greenroom