I need a command to find the all files which filename contains the text "SomeText" and to delete that files!

From /home/movie/wp-content/uploads/

this folder I have lots of files and folders .


Also I need that for folders and subfolders who contains some text in folder name "someTextInFolderName"

Tnx in advance!

Hi and welcome to LinuxQuestions! What about the find command? It has features that match exactly what you're looking for: searching file names by pattern, recursion, ability to delete the items found. Take a look at man find or at http://www.gnu.org/software/findutils/manual/find.html. Check the -delete option (but be careful to use it only when you're absolutely sure of the search results). Feel free to post your attempts if in doubt.

1 members found this post helpful.

Can this command be "transformed" to do delete instead of grep?

find /home/movie/wp-content/uploads/ -type f -exec grep -l "SomeText" {} \;

You should really have a look at the manpage for find, especially the options -name and -delete. No need for a grep the way you are doing it, you can do all that with the available options of find.

Hi there,

Yes colucix is right you can use find command to get the listing of files and folders with a particular pattern. As he mentioned look at the man page of find command using "man find" to get the listing of switches that you can use with it. In your case you are looking for files with SomeText under /home/movie/wp-content/uploads/ so you can run the following command:

find /home/movie/wp-content/uploads/ -name 'SomeText*'

In which text mentioned between single quotes will be the patter you are looking for.

Once you are sure that you found the files & folders you can run the following command to delete them:

rm -r -f /home/movie/wp-content/uploads/SomeText*

Beware rm -r -f the matched pattern without any user intervention. If you want to be prompted before deletion then just use rm -r /Pattern. -r is used for recursive and -f is used for force

Also I would suggest you to backup the files in USB stick or other partition if you think you will be required the files at later point. You can use the following command to copy them over

cp -arvp /home/movie/wp-content/uploads/SomeText* /tmp

where,

a=all including hidden files
r=recursive
v=verbose
p=preserve permissions

Addition:

You can delete using the following command:

find / -name 'Sometext*' -print -delete

This command works:
find /home/movie/wp-content/uploads/ -name 'SomeText*'


but with this nothing happen?
rm -r -f /home/movie/wp-content/uploads/SomeText*

Because you didn't gave it the -delete option. It would help if you look at the manpage, we won't spoonfeed you.

@ Tobi,

Thanks Tobi.

@ moviecarpet

rm -r -f /home/movie/wp-content/uploads/SomeText* will only work if those 'SomeText*' files are located directly under directory /home/movie/wp-content/uploads/ it won't scan some directories to match the pattern.

Else go with the other command -delete that I have mentioned in my previous post.

I understand, just one more question...will this command delete all files and folders starting from "root" folder or only under /uploads/ folder?

find / -name 'Sometext*' -print -delete

This command will delete any file starting from the root folder, i.e. effectively system-wide. You probably want something like
Be careful with this command. Run it without the -delete first to verify that it really only matches unwanted files.

1 members found this post helpful.

Exactly!!!

When you run find / -name it searches from / if you give the specified path like crts said find /home/user1h -name 'SomeText*' or find /tmp/downloads/test/ -name 'SomeText*' it will search only under those directories.

The first you've mentioned and very dangerous indeed. The first(s) argument(s) of the find command are the item you search for, basically the starting point (directory) from which you want to perform a search:
without any option you will find all the objects below the specified search path. Then you may want to refine your search to find 1) only files (exclude directories, links and so on) using the -type predicate, 2) only files whose name matches a specific pattern using -name. These are the predicates of the find command:
This gives you the result of your search. Then find offers a bunch of actions you can perform on every single item found, for example -ls to retrieve a detailed list, -delete to remove the items or -exec to run a custom command. As previously stated, first check the result of the search to be sure your criteria have matched only the files you really want to delete. If this is true, run the command again adding the -delete action and your files will vanish!

Big Tnx all work

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