Deleting all files with filenames matching a pattern and size below a certain limit

Question

I need to delete all files with a .avi expansion and whose size is below 100MB. I have a large collection of video files and I need to delete the short ones to free up some space. How do I accomplish this ?

Answer 1

Use the find command:

find /path/to/ -name '*.avi' -type f -size -100M -delete

Details:

• /path/to/

  This tells find to look for files in the /path/to/ directory and all its subdirectories. If you want to start from the current directory, use . instead.

• -name '*.avi'

  This tells find to only look for files whose names end in .avi

• -type f

  This tells find to only look for regular files. This excludes directories, pipes, sockets, etc.

• -size -100M

  This tells find to only look for files smaller than 100MB. If you wanted to delete files larger than 100MB, then use +100M instead.

• -delete

  This tells find to delete the files matching the above criteria.

For safety, the first time you try this command, leave off the -delete. This will return a list of files found:

    find /path/to/ -name '*.avi' -type f -size -100M

If the files found are the ones that you want to delete, then add back -delete.

Searching only the current directory and not its subdirectories

To limit recursion find into subdirectories, use the -maxdepth option:

find /path/to/ -maxdepth 1 -name '*.avi' -type f -size -100M -delete

To perform the above on the current directory:

find . -maxdepth 1 -name '*.avi' -type f -size -100M -delete