Command Line regextype to delete files

Question

I have a series of files that always start with at least 5 numerical values like:

85966_88.jpg

Using this answer I learned to use the find and regextype in a command to delete files like this:

find . -regextype posix-extended -iregex './a_[0-9]{6}' -execdir bash -c '[[ ${1##./a_} > 000750 ]] && echo $1' "removing: " {} \;

I altered this command to suite my needs like this:

find . -regextype posix-extended -iregex './[0-9]{5}' -execdir bash -c '[[ ${1##./} > 000001 ]] && echo $1' "removing: " {} \;

I execute the command and it does not delete the files. I cannot figure out how to remove all .jpg that have numeric values in the first 5 digits and then _

Answer 1

Firstly, the command as written doesn't delete anything: as noted in the a nswer you linked

Test this out with the echo command, and once you're sure it lists the correct files, use rm instead.

Second, it's over-complicated for your case, since you don't want to limit the removal to a range or subset of the matches (so you don't need the shell test stuff) - you could simply do

find -regextype egrep -regex '.*/[0-9]{5}_.*\.jpg' -print

(to test) and replace -print by -delete once you're satisfied it's working right.

However even regex seems overcomplicated - a simple glob match is actually less typing:

find -name '[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]_*.jpg' -print

(again, replace -print by -delete when you're sure).

If you don't need to search recursively, a simple shell glob should work:

rm -i [0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]_*.jpg