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CIsForCookies
Asked: 2018-07-09 04:36:48 +0800 CST

Is it possible to exclude some files from rm -rf? [duplicate]

  • 772

I have a directory that I is filled by another user, and I'm tasked with maintaining it. I want to delete all its content except a 2 files with a specific name. Is it possible with rm or should I do this:

cp aaa/a ./a && cp aaa/b ./b && rm -rf aaa/* && mv ./a aaa/a && mv ./b aaa/b

where aaa is the directory, a,b are the files I want to keep, and there are (at least, there may be) other files/directories in there.

Is there a better (and shorter) way?

command-line bash rm sh

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    With bash extended globs, given

    $ tree aaa
aaa
├── a
├── b
├── c
├── d
├── e
└── subdir

    then

    rm -rf aaa/!(a|b)

    leaves

    $ tree aaa
aaa
├── a
└── b

0 directories, 2 files
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