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How do I safely delete all files with a specific extension (e.g. .bak) from current directory and all subfolders using one command-line? Simply, I'm afraid to use rm since I used it wrong once and now I need advice.

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738

You don't even need to use rm in this case if you are afraid. Use find:

find . -name "*.bak" -type f -delete

But use it with precaution. Run first:

find . -name "*.bak" -type f

to see exactly which files you will remove.

Also, make sure that -delete is the last argument in your command. If you put it before the -name *.bak argument, it will delete everything.

See man find and man rm for more info and see also this related question on SE:

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  • How's this different from rm *.bak? – sayantankhan Nov 15 '13 at 13:11
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    @Bolt64 Your rm *.bak will not work for subdirectories. – Radu Rădeanu Nov 15 '13 at 13:14
  • With default settings rm *.bak will only delete all files ending with .bak in the current directory. TO also do things in subdirectories you either needed to fiddle with globs, use the -r option or use the find example. – Hennes Nov 15 '13 at 13:14
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    @Hennes Be careful with rm -r *.bak! It also removes directories ending in .bak with all their content. – Radu Rădeanu Nov 15 '13 at 13:34
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    Make sure that -delete is the last argument in your command. If you put it before the -name *.bak argument, it will delete everything. – Michael Oct 29 '14 at 14:36
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find . -name "*.bak" -type f -print0 | xargs -0 /bin/rm -f
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    Welcome to askubuntu! While this is a perfectly valid answer I don't think there's any advantage in using this instead of the -delete flag of find. More information can be found in the GNU manuals entry for deleting files with find. – Glutanimate Apr 4 '14 at 20:11
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    you are probably right, it's just an alternative solution, perhaps more raw ;) – lokers Apr 4 '14 at 22:13
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    This is not just an alternative but an example how other commands can be combined together with the pipe '|'. +1 – Boris Pavlović Jun 5 '14 at 7:18
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    This alternative solutions work on other environments that lack -delete (like cygwin) – ciriarte Aug 15 '14 at 4:07
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    I think this is the best answer here. – Léo Léopold Hertz 준영 Jun 29 '15 at 11:27
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First run the command shopt -s globstar. You can run that on the command line, and it'll have effect only in that shell window. You can put it in your .bashrc, and then all newly started shells will pick it up. The effect of that command is to make **/ match files in the current directory and its subdirectories recursively (by default, **/ means the same thing as */: only in the immediate subdirectories). Then:

rm **/*.bak

(or gvfs-trash **/*.bak or what have you).

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19

Deleting files is for me not something you should use rm for. Here is an alternative:

sudo apt-get install gvfs     # install a tool that allows you to put stuff in the trash
alias "trash"="gvfs-trash"    # you can also put this in .bash_aliases or simply use the command without alias
trash *.bak                   # trash the files (thus moving them to the trash bin)

As Flimm states in the comments:

The package trash-cli does the same thing as gvfs-trash without the dependency on gvfs.

So:

sudo apt-get install trash-cli

You don't need to make an alias for this, because the trash-cli package provides a command trash, which does what we want.

As Eliah Kagan makes clear in extensive comments, you can also make this recursive using find. In that case you can't use an alias, so the commands below assume you have installed trash-cli. I summarise Eliah's comments:

This command finds and displays all .bak files and symlinks anywhere in the current directory or its subdirectories or below. 

find . -name '*.bak' -xtype f

To delete them, append an -exec with the trash command:

find . -name '*.bak' -xtype f -exec trash {} +

-xtype f selects files and symlinks to files, but not folders. To delete .bak folders too, remove that part, and use -execdir, which avoids cannot trash non-existent errors for .bak files inside .bak directories:

find . -name '*.bak' -execdir trash {} +
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    "Don't use rm to delete things" is a controversial statement but I have to agree that it's often wiser to use something that will let you undo things. – Oli♦ Nov 15 '13 at 15:12
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    The package trash-cli does the same thing as gvfs-trash without the dependency on gvfs. – Flimm Nov 20 '13 at 9:08
  • I have edited it in the answer, next time feel free to do the edit yourself. – don.joey Nov 20 '13 at 10:06
  • @don.joey This answer seems to say find . -name "*.bak" -type f displays what trash *.bak deletes. Is that really what you mean? You can move directories to the trash with trash or gvfs-trash, but trash *.bak will only moves files and directories whose names end with .bak and that reside immediately in the current directory. The shell expands *.bak, so trash *.bak won't affect .bak files in subdirectories not themselves named .bak. – Eliah Kagan Oct 14 '17 at 2:30
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    @don.joey Yes ls *.bak (which I think you mean) lists what trash *.bak trashes. find . -name '*.bak' -xtype f -exec trash {} + trashes all .bak files anywhere under .. It can't use an alias, so install trash-cli or write gvfs-trash instead. Here's an example. -xtype f selects files and symlinks to files, but not folders. To delete .bak folders too, use find . -name '*.bak' -execdir trash {} +, which avoids cannot trash non existent errors for .bak files inside .bak directories. Please feel free to use any of this in your answer. – Eliah Kagan Oct 14 '17 at 19:15
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If you want to delete all files of a certain type, but only 1 folder "deep" from the current folder:

find . -maxdepth 2 -name "*.log" -type f -delete

-maxdepth 2 because the current directory "." counts as the first folder.

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If you are inside a git repo, you can use:

git clean -fdx

This deletes untracked files and files in .gitignore.

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