How to delete all the files and folders inside all the directories except some specific directory?

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

hi,

i have a requirement to delete all the files from all the directories except some specific directories like archive and log.
for example:
there are following directories such as
A B C D Archive E Log F
which contains some sub directories and files. The requirement is to delete all the files and subfolders except the contents of Archive and Log.

2

Why would you want to do this?
-- this appears to be a homework-type of problem, and not real-life.
What have you tried so far?

3

Not always. I had almost the same scenario where I had to create a script in my office for the another department guys.

4

Its not a homework question. I got a small task of clearing all the old files from all the directories except archive. Instead of going to each 200+ directories and deleting the files manually, thought of writing a script. Can someone please help.

5 
find . -type d \( -name archive -o -name log \) -prune -o -type f -print

If this correctly prints the files to be deleted then replace -print by -delete or -exec rm -f {} +

1 Like
6

Thanks for the solution. Can you please explain it?

7

find . -type d
Searches for directories recursively starting from current folder.

\( -name archive -o -name log \) -prune
If directory is named archive or log then remove ( prune ) it from output of find command.

-o -type f -print
Otherwise print all files from the directories, except those pruned.

As MadeInGermany stated,

which will delete the files instead of printing them to the standard output.

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8

-prune does not only suppress output, it really skips(prunes) these directories.
-o is logical OR, in a sequence has the meaning of "otherwise"
-a is logical AND, and can be omitted (is implicit), in a sequence has the meaning of "then"
\( -name archive -o -name log \) -prune
means: if name is "archive" OR if name is "log" then prune.
Perhaps the following "translation" make sense:

( if name is "archive" otherwise if name is "log" ) then if prune
otherwise if type is file then if print

The prune and print and delete and exec actions are always true.
The -exec is special: it is followed by a Unix command and arguments until there is a \; or a + ; a {} argument is replaced by the current file name.

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