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Remove everything except that file

Terminal - Remove everything except that file
ls | egrep -v "[REGULAR EXPRESSION]" | xargs rm -v
2010-04-01 02:40:40
User: Saxphile
Functions: egrep ls rm xargs
-1
Up
Down
Remove everything except that file

This is a slight variation of an existing submission, but uses regular expression to look for files instead. This makes it vastly more versatile, and one can easily verify the files to be kept by running ls | egrep "[REGULAR EXPRESSION]"

Add to favourites | Report as malicious

Alternatives

There are 4 alternatives - vote for the best!

Terminal - Alternatives
rm !(*.foo|*.bar|*.baz)
2010-04-13 15:13:54
User: hutch
Functions: rm
64
Up
Down
Delete all files in a folder that don't match a certain file extension

Deletes all files in a folder that are NOT *.foo, *.bar or *.baz files. Edit the pattern inside the brackets as you like.

Show sample output | Comments (3) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
rm -f !(survivior.txt)
2010-09-26 04:50:55
User: RanyAlbeg
Functions: rm
41
Up
Down
Remove all but one specific file
Comments (9) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
find . ! -name <FILENAME> -delete
2010-01-13 23:29:51
User: haplo
Functions: find
Tags: files rm
8
Up
Down
Remove everything except that file

it will remove everything except the file names matching you can use also use wildcards

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
( shopt -s extglob; rm !(<PATTERN>) )
2010-01-13 16:43:15
User: sputnick
Functions: rm
Tags: files rm glob shopt
7
Up
Down
Remove everything except that file

Remove everything except that file with shell tricks inside a subshell to avoid changes in the environment.

help shopt
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
rm !(file_to_keep_undeleted)
2010-12-15 13:31:06
User: strzel_a
Functions: rm
5
Up
Down
Takes all file except file between !()

Go to tmp :

cd /tmp; mkdir retmp; cd retmp

Create 10 files :

for i in {1..10}; do touch test$i; done

Remove all files except test10 :

rm !(test10)

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious

Know a better way?

If you can do better, submit your command here.

What others think

In zsh, this is easy:

rm ^filename

the caret indicates logical negation. That is my second favorite feature of zsh. The first is the ability to share history between running shell instances, and not have them clobber each other when exiting. (I'm pretty sure bash doesn't do this.)

Comment by bwoodacre 167 weeks and 6 days ago

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