I want to remove almost all files in a directory. It contains a number of them with many different extensions. I need to leave in the directory those with the extensions .xml and .mpeg, for instance.
I don't see that rm has an --exclude option.
I haven't tried a combination like
$ ls -l | grep -v ".xml" | grep -v ".mpeg"
and then remove the output of the above,
but there must be a shorter/elegant way of doing it.
Thanks.

There is:

First you wouldn't want "ls -l" because it gives you more than the file name.

You could do your ls and pipe it to "xargs rm" (of course leaving out the -l as noted above). xargs says to execute the command on each item piped into it.

However more elegantly:

ls !(*.mpeg|*.xml) will do a list of all file other than the ones specified. You could pipe this to xargs rm as mentioned above but since rm will use the same syntax you can simply type:

rm !(*.mpeg|*.xml)


CAUTION: Do the ls first just to make sure the list it gives you is the list you want to remove. The dot (.) in many commands is seen as "any string of characters". I "think" it is litteral in ls and rm but wouldn't swear to it without testing.

what shell will that work in?

it fails in my bash, csh and zsh.

here is the unelegant solution you where talking about.
[CODE]
$ ls | grep -v -e '.*\.mpeg|.*\..xml' | xargs rm
[\CODE]
-v inverts the matching, so non-matching lines are printed and you escape the period in the extension, otherwise files named 'somenamempeg' would match because . will match anything.

another, but possibly much less elegant, technique is to use find:
[CODE]
$ find ./ -type f \! -name '*.mpeg' \! -name '*.xml' -maxdepth 1 -exec rm {} \;
[\CODE]

somebody more familiar with find may be able to shorten this a bit, but it works. if you want an explanation of all the options as an academic exercise, just ask.

oh yea, as jlighter suggested, you should run these without the rm part first to make sure its listing all the files your expecting to remove.

Don't forget the simple solutions either:
I've got nothing against "elegant" commands, it's just you might be able to get your work done with simple approaches than researching a clever shell syntax. Do whatever makes your life simple...

haha, yes. thats probably the method i would choose. but there is nothing wrong with learning the ins and outs of your shell.

Hi, when I tried this I got

bash: !: event not found

Why is that?

Regarding
$ ls | grep -v -e '.*\.mpeg|.*\..xml' | xargs rm
maybe it is the operator | or the quotes that don't work,
but
$ ls | grep -v -e ".*\.mpeg" | grep -v -e ".\*.head" | xargs rm
did all right.

Moving the files to /tmp worked as well but only if I created
the directory /tmp/save before, otherwise it would say that
$ mv *.xml *.mpeg /tmp/save
mv: when moving multiple files, last argument must be a directory.

And thanks a lot for the answers.

D'oh! Guess I should have tested bash. I've been doing Unix for so long that I always install ksh on Linux because bash annoys me.

The commands I gave work for ksh (Korn Shell) but on testing Sircliff is right - they don't work for bash which is the default shell used in Linux.

thats an interesting capability of the Korn Shell, much simpler and shorter. I'll have to keep that in mind. I wonder, do you know if Korn supports vi style command line editing? I imagine it does. I find that to be the most usefull feature of bash for me.

OK,
$ mv {*.xml,*.mpeg} /tmp/save
// instead of $ mv *.xml *.mpeg /tmp/save
$ rm *
$ mv /tmp/save/* ./
does the trick.

rm `ls | grep -v xml | grep -v mpeg`

that sould do it

And it does

rm `ls | grep -v "xml\|mpeg"`

as well!

Yes it does. Or you can use emacs or another editor if you prefer. You can set which one to use by either setting your EDITOR=vi (or =emacs etc...) or by invoking ksh with "ksh -o vi".
By the way ksh lets you set variables by saying "export VARIABLE=value" instead of having to do the "VARIABLE=value;export VARIABLE" thing.

Another thing I like about ksh is you can use vi's search (/) to seach back through shell history instead of having to step back through (though you can do the stepping just by hitting esc-k then doing k for each step). It also allows command line completion like bash.

Since I've never really taken the time to discover all the intricacies of bash I'm sure its a good shell. Just never found the need to go to it since most commercial Unix flavors have ksh (or posix shell which incorporates most of its features) by default and don't have bash though there are of course ported version for them.

So does bash

So does bash. Try [ctrl] + [r]

Not starting a flamewar, just letting people know that bash has this functionality too.
Besides, everyone knows that real hackers use zsh

haha, perhaps real hackers use xterm...

thanks for the ctr-r tip, rather handy.