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Accepted
Maythux
Asked: 2015-05-17 04:15:01 +0800 CST

How to delete all files except one named file from a specific folder [duplicate]

  • 772

Here is the situation.

I have a directory which contains many files with different extensions. I want to delete all files except one with a specific name.

This could be easily done using the GUI by selecting all and pressing ctrl and deselecting the file in question.

That is exactly what I want to, but how can I do it from the command line?

For example: dirA contains the following files:

a.txt
b.txt
c.php
d.html
a.db
b.db
e.html

I want to delete all files keeping only the file named a.txt.

command-line

5 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I've come with this easy simple great command:

    rm !(a.txt)

    you can use ! as a negation

    Test the glob with echo first i.e. 

    echo !(a.txt)

    If it doesn't work, for bash you may need to enable this with 

    shopt -s extglob

    If you wanted to keep both a.txt and b.txt, you can use !(a.txt|b.txt) or !([ab].txt).

    Edit:

    to make rm working recursively just add -r like

    rm -r !(a.txt)

    and also, it is working with folder. just need to change the name to the dir name, such as for a_dir

    rm -r !(a_dir)
    • 99

  2. You can try this command:

    find . \! -name 'a.txt' -delete

    But you need be careful because find command is recursive.

    • 23

  3. You can do this in terminal:

    cd dirA 
export GLOBIGNORE=a.txt
rm *
export GLOBIGNORE=
    • 12

  4. You can use the command :

    find ! -name 'a.txt' -type f -exec rm -f {} +

    This will look for files (-type f) in the current directory except for file a.txt (! -name 'a.txt) and then will remove them (-exec rm -f {} +)

    • 5

  5. Use find and xargs

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

    To exclude multiple things:

    find folder -type f -not -name 'a.txt' -not -name 'b.txt' -print0 | xargs -0 rm

    This also works with wildcards:

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

    To search in the current folder, use . in place of 'folder'.

    Base source

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