Remove everything except that file

ls | egrep -v "[REGULAR EXPRESSION]" | xargs rm -v

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]"

-1

By: Saxphile

2010-04-01 02:40:40

egrep ls rm xargs files rm

9 Alternatives + Submit Alt

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
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
Example: rm !(*.tex|*.pdf) deletes all except the tex and pdf files.
```
107

rm !(*.foo|*.bar|*.baz)

trivialanalog · 2010-04-13 15:13:54 20
Remove all but one specific file
This is sample output - yours may be different.
57

rm -f !(survivior.txt)

RanyAlbeg · 2010-09-26 04:50:55 27
Remove everything except that file

it will remove everything except the file names matching you can use also use wildcards
This is sample output - yours may be different.
9

find . ! -name <FILENAME> -delete

haplo · 2010-01-13 23:29:51 7
Remove everything except that file

Remove everything except that file with shell tricks inside a subshell to avoid changes in the environment. help shopt
This is sample output - yours may be different.
8

( shopt -s extglob; rm !(<PATTERN>) )

sputnick · 2010-01-13 16:43:15 6
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)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
6

rm !(file_to_keep_undeleted)

strzel_a · 2010-12-15 13:31:06 4

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.)

bwoodacre · 757 weeks and 1 day ago

rahimhh21 · 109 weeks and 1 day ago

Perfecthomepugs · 100 weeks and 3 days ago

pugpuppies95 · 62 weeks and 4 days ago

yeneba6574 · 17 weeks and 4 days ago

What do you think?

Any thoughts on this command? Does it work on your machine? Can you do the same thing with only 14 characters?

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