How to delete multiple files at once in Bash on Linux

Question

I have this list of files on a Linux server   abc log 2012-03-14 abc log 2012-03-27 abc log 2012-03-28 abc log 2012-03-29 abc log 2012-03-30 abc log 2012-04-02 abc log 2012-04-04 abc log 2012-04-05 abc log 2012-04-09 abc log 2012-04-10   I ve been deleting selected log files one by one  using the command rm -rf see below   rm -rf abc log 2012-03-14 rm -rf abc log 2012-03-27 rm -rf abc log 2012-03-28   Is there another way  so that I can delete the selected files at once

User · Answer

I am not a linux guru  but I believe you want to pipe your list of output files to xargs rm -rf   I have used something like this in the past with good results   Test on a sample directory first   EDIT - I might have misunderstood  based on the other answers that are appearing   If you can use wildcards  great   I assumed that your original list that you displayed was generated by a program to give you your  selection   so I thought piping to xargs would be the way to go

User · Answer

If you want to delete all files whose names match a particular form  a wildcard  glob pattern  is the most straightforward solution  Some examples    rm -f abc log                 Remove them all   rm -f abc log 2012            Remove all logs from 2012   rm -f abc log 2012-0 123      Remove all files from the first quarter of 2012  Regular expressions are more powerful than wildcards  you can feed the output of grep to rm -f  For example  if some of the file names start with  quot abc log quot  and some with  quot ABC log quot   grep lets you do a case-insensitive match    rm -f   ls   grep -i   abc  log      This will cause problems if any of the file names contain funny characters  including spaces  Be careful  When I do this  I run the ls   grep     command first and check that it produces the output I want -- especially if I m using rm -f    ls   grep -i   abc  log     check that the list is correct    rm -f        where    expands to the previous command  Or I can type up-arrow or Ctrl-P and edit the previous line to add the rm -f command  This assumes you re using the bash shell  Some other shells  particularly csh and tcsh and some older sh-derived shells  may not support the        syntax  You can use the equivalent backtick syntax    rm -f  ls   grep -i   abc  log      The        syntax is easier to read  and if you re really ambitious it can be nested  Finally  if the subset of files you want to delete can t be easily expressed with a regular expression  a trick I often use is to list the files to a temporary text file  then edit it    ls  gt  list   vi list     Use your favorite text editor  I can then edit the list file manually  leaving only the files I want to remove  and then    rm -f    lt list   or   rm -f  cat list    Again  this assumes none of the file names contain funny characters  particularly spaces   Or  when editing the list file  I can add rm -f  to the beginning of each line and then        list  or   source   list  Editing the file is also an opportunity to add quotes where necessary  for example changing rm -f foo bar to rm -f  foo bar

User · Answer

Just use multiline selection in sublime to combine all of the files into a single line and add a space between each file name and then add rm at the beginning of the list  This is mostly useful when there isn t a pattern in the filenames you want to delete       gt  rm abc log 2012-03-14 abc log 2012-03-27 abc log 2012-03-28 abc log 2012-03-29 abc log 2012-03-30 abc log 2012-04-02 abc log 2012-04-04 abc log 2012-04-05 abc log 2012-04-09 abc log 2012-04-10

User · Answer

Use a wildcard     to match multiple files   For example  the command below will delete all files with names beginning with abc log 2012-03-   rm -f abc log 2012-03-    I d recommend running ls abc log 2012-03-  to list the files so that you can see what you are going to delete before running the rm command   For more details see the Bash man page on filename expansion

User · Answer

Bash supports all sorts of wildcards and expansions   Your exact case would be handled by brace expansion  like so     rm -rf abc log 2012-03- 14 27 28    The above would expand to a single command with all three arguments  and be equivalent to typing     rm -rf abc log 2012-03-14 abc log 2012-03-27 abc log 2012-03-28   It s important to note that this expansion is done by the shell  before rm is even loaded

User · Answer

if you want to delete all files that belong to a directory at once  For example   your Directory name is  log  and  log  directory include abc log 2012-03-14  abc log 2012-03-15     etc files  You have to be above the log directory and   rm -rf  log

User · Answer

A wild card would work nicely for this  although to be safe it would be best to make the use of the wild card as minimal as possible  so something along the lines of this   rm -rf abc log 2012-    Although from the looks of it  are those just single files  The recursive option should not be necessary if none of those items are directories  so best to not use that  just for safety

[linux] How to delete multiple files at once in Bash on Linux?

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