Script to delete all something.txt~ file from a directory

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

There are some files in a directory like a.tx~ , b.txt~,c.txt~.
I want to delete all these files inside that directory and sub directory.
How can i do this?

#!/bin/bash
cd thatdirectory
......
rm -rf *~
......
2

See man find (POSIX) with the exec option.

3

Any example?

4

Eg

find somewhere -name '*~' -exec command {} \;

Note that the most required ability in the computing field is the ability to read and understand technical documentation, instead of relying on being fed read-to-go solutions.

5

I know this command.
Confusion was, will it search recursively inside directory?

6

Yes, see DESCRIPTION section in find manual man find ("find").

7

From the manual there are:

       -exec command ;
          Execute  command;  true  if 0 status is returned.  All following
          arguments to find are taken to be arguments to the command until
          an  argument  consisting of `;' is encountered.  The string `{}'
          is replaced by the current file name being processed  everywhere
          it occurs in the arguments to the command, not just in arguments
          where it is alone, as in some versions of find.  Both  of  these
          constructions might need to be escaped (with a `\') or quoted to
          protect them from expansion by the shell.  See the EXAMPLES sec-
          tion for examples of the use of the -exec option.  The specified
          command is run once for each matched file.  The command is  exe-
          cuted  in  the starting directory.   There are unavoidable secu-
          rity problems surrounding use of the -exec  action;  you    should
          use the -execdir option instead.

       -exec command {} +
          This  variant  of the -exec action runs the specified command on
          the selected files, but the command line is built  by  appending
          each  selected file name at the end; the total number of invoca-
          tions of the command will  be  much  less  than  the  number  of
          matched  files.    The command line is built in much the same way
          that xargs builds its command lines.  Only one instance of  `{}'
          is  allowed  within the command.    The command is executed in the
          starting directory.

From example i got:

find . -type f -exec file '{}' \;

Why is there no \; at last from manual?
Or why is there no + in example?

8

find needs a literal semicolon at the end of the argument list for the exec command. Since it's a shell special character, it has to be escaped. Alternatively, you could quote it.

I didn't use the + version in the example since, although specified in the POSIX standard, it's not generally supported across platforms. HP-UX find, for example, would throw an error.