Example: rm !(*.tex|*.pdf) deletes all except the tex and pdf files.
it will remove everything except the file names matching you can use also use wildcards
Remove everything except that file with shell tricks inside a subshell to avoid changes in the environment.
help shopt
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 command is recursive and will delete in all directories in ".". It will find and delete all files not specified with ! -name "pattern". In this case it's file extensions. -type f means it will only find files and not directories. Finally the -delete flag ask find to delete what it matches. You can test the command by running it first without delete and it will list the files it will delete when you run it. Show Sample Output
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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shopt -s extglob