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Accepted
Abdennour TOUMI
Asked: 2013-10-24 00:19:05 +0800 CST

How exclude folders for remove when using ( rm -rf *) on the parent dir

  • 772

i run the following command line to remove all files/dirs in directory : 

       cd /home/abdennour/android/

       rm -rf *

the architecture of this directory is as following : 

   /home/abdennour/android/
   /home/abdennour/android/documents/
   /home/abdennour/android/documents/medialib/
   /home/abdennour/android/documents/preview/
   /home/abdennour/android/fixtures/
   /home/abdennour/android/images/
   /home/abdennour/android/images/hard/
   /home/abdennour/android/images/mlibrary/
   /home/abdennour/android/images/mlibrary/thumbs/
   /home/abdennour/android/js/ 
  .....

i want to remove all with excluding the following directories : 

  /home/abdennour/android/documents/
  /home/abdennour/android/images/mlibrary/
command-line

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    You can use GLOBIGNORE environment variable. Suppose that you want to delete everithing except /home/abdennour/android/documents/ and /home/abdennour/android/images/mlibrary/, then you can do the following:

    cd /home/abdennour/android/
export GLOBIGNORE="documents:images"
rm -rf *
cd images
export GLOBIGNORE="mlibrary"
rm -rf *
export GLOBIGNORE=""
    • 2

  2. As the list of those dirs you don't want to remove is pretty short and it doesn't seem to fit any obvious pattern, I think you will just have to move those dirs somewhere prior to deleting the rest.

    • -1