find and delete files

smshuja · 12-28-2005, 01:06 AM

Hi All,
i am very new to linux. we have some files like
!2005-somefile.php
!somefile.fla

how can i find all files that have "!" in the beginning and delete them all from a particular directory like /home/sam

any help would be greatly appreciated.

thanks
shuja

gilead · 12-28-2005, 01:20 AM

You can either wrap the filename in single quotes like: rm '!2005-somefile.php'
or, escape the ! with: rm \!2005-somefile.php

To find all of these files that are in or under /home/sam you can use something like:
find /home/sam -name '!*' -exec ls -l {} \; # This will display each file - no delete
find /home/sam -name '!*' -exec rm -i {} \; # This will delete each file after you confirm the delete
find /home/sam -name '!*' -exec rm -f {} \; # This will delete each file without confirmation

smshuja · 12-28-2005, 01:57 AM

thanks a million, gilead

gilead · 12-28-2005, 02:20 PM

No problem - glad it did the job :-)

smshuja · 12-28-2005, 11:59 PM

it did delete the files but didnt delete the folders which contain "!" at the beginning.
is there a way to do that?

thanks a lot for the help
shuja

nitinatindore · 12-29-2005, 01:21 AM

The same good old rm command(which gilead had already had rightly said ); you just need to append with -r option.The command below will remove all files with "!*" without confirmation

find /home/sam -name '!*' -exec rm -rf {} \;

In case you are just want to delete directories, not files than use (NOTE: it will only delete empty directories)

find /home/sam -name '!*' -exec rmdir -v {} \;