How to remove all files ending with ~ made by Emacs

Question

Whenever I edit files on emacs, it seems a temporary file is created with the same name with ~ appended to it. Does anyone know an quick/easy way to delete all of these files in the working directory?

Why don't you add them to your `.gitignore` file if you are using git? I think you can do it similarly in other VCS too. — Vasantha Ganesh, Aug 12 '17 at 10:45

score 114 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 21 '10 at 06:06

114

While all the others answers here correctly explain how to remove the files, you ought to understand what's going on. Those files ending in ~ are backup files, automatically created by Emacs. They can be useful sometimes. If you're annoyed by the files and want to delete them every time, then you either

(1). prevent the creation of backup files:

(setq make-backup-files nil)

or

(2). Have it save the backup files in some other directory, where they won't bother you unless you go looking for them. I have the following in my .emacs:

(setq backup-directory-alist '(("." . "~/.emacs.d/backup"))
  backup-by-copying t    ; Don't delink hardlinks
  version-control t      ; Use version numbers on backups
  delete-old-versions t  ; Automatically delete excess backups
  kept-new-versions 20   ; how many of the newest versions to keep
  kept-old-versions 5    ; and how many of the old
  )

(Only the first line is crucial.) To see documentation about backup-directory-alist, type C-h v backup-directory-alist.

answered Apr 21 '10 at 06:06

ShreevatsaR

38,402
17
102
126

How is the above command supposed to be entered? neither the shell nor Meta-x seem to work for me... – Ocasta Eshu Aug 20 '12 at 21:36
1

@OcastaEshu: This is supposed to be put in your `.emacs` config file. (On Unix, it's in your home directory; I'm not sure where the file is on Windows.) Alternatively (and non-permanently), you can put it in any empty buffer and do M-x eval-buffer, or else type M-x eval-expression and type/paste the above. – ShreevatsaR Aug 21 '12 at 02:58
2

You can also made all this changes through M-x -> customize-group -> backup – Bruno Berisso Oct 30 '13 at 23:44
Is there a way to expand the ~/.emacs/backup to something like ~/.emacs/`cwd`/backup, that is, separate the backup files by including the directory they came from? – Don Dec 11 '14 at 15:39
@Don: I'm sure there's a way, but why? You'll almost never have to go look in the directory, so why bother? The names already have the full path in them, so files from the same directory stay together. – ShreevatsaR Dec 13 '14 at 16:50
@ShreevatsaR, actually I'm probably mixing mode, I want the ~ files generated by ^X v ~ to go into my .emacs.d/backup directory too – Don Dec 14 '14 at 17:14
@Don: Yes, looks like `^X V ~` runs `vc-revision-other-window`; this is some detail of vc-mode (which I don't use, sorry) and is not related to the backups Emacs makes. – ShreevatsaR Dec 14 '14 at 17:49
beautiful answer – SinaMobasheri Jul 15 '23 at 19:16

score 33 · Answer 2 · edited Nov 25 '10 at 22:59

33

find . -name '*~' -exec rm {} \;

EDIT: Huh ... while this works, I posted it thinking rm *~ would cause the shell to interpolate ~ into the user's home dir. It doesn't, at least with the version of bash on this machine - YMMV, of course.

Some versions of find have a -delete option:

find . -name '*~' -delete

edited Nov 25 '10 at 22:59

Gareth Rees

64,967
9
133
163

answered Apr 21 '10 at 04:51

Brian Roach

76,169
12
136
161

The second one worked fine on my mac on Mountain Lion. thanks. – pjammer Feb 27 '13 at 16:26
how do i do it recursively in sub-directories – vijayst Jun 30 '17 at 15:53
1

@vijayst that's what this command actually does... it traverses subdirectories starting with the current working directory, `.` – Gwyneth Llewelyn Jan 21 '21 at 21:21

score 10 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 21 '10 at 04:51

You can just

rm *\~

More usefully, you can change the emacs backup directory so all those files are stored in a common location, by adding this to your .emacs:

'(backup-directory-alist (quote (("." . "/common/backup/path"))))

There are other options you can fiddle with

score 7 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 21 '10 at 04:52

From the working directory:

$ rm *~

From everywhere:

$ cd; find . -name '*~' | xargs rm -f

From within emacs, using dired.

C-x C-f . RET ~ x y e s RET

You can suppress backup file creation permanently by adding the following line to your ~/.emacs

(setq make-backup-files nil)

I don't recommend this last one, as emacs's backup files have saved me many times over the years.

score 5 · Answer 5 · answered Apr 21 '10 at 04:51

5

rm -rf *~

answered Apr 21 '10 at 04:51

YOU

120,166
34
186
219

this does not handle subdirectories – dzen Apr 21 '10 at 06:22
1

You can invoke the above command from within Emacs by typing M-! first. – offby1 Apr 21 '10 at 15:18

score 5 · Answer 6 · answered Apr 21 '10 at 05:50

5

You can open the directory in emacs, flag all backup file with ~ then delete them with x

answered Apr 21 '10 at 05:50

Rémi

8,172
2
27
32

score 4 · Answer 7 · answered Sep 05 '14 at 19:05

In eamcs dired mode:

d Flag this file for deletion.

u Remove deletion flag on this line.

DEL Move point to previous line and remove the deletion flag on that line.

x Delete the files that are flagged for deletion.

# : Flag all auto-save files (files whose names start and end with `#') for deletion

~ : Flag all backup files (files whose names end with `~') for deletion

& : Flag for deletion all files with certain kinds of names, names that suggest you could easily create the files again

. : Flag excess numeric backup files for deletion. The oldest and newest few backup files of any one file are exempt; the middle ones are flagged.

% d regexp RET : Flag for deletion all files whose names match the regular expression regexp.

It makes sense to remove these files using the software that creates it. I don't like the `rm` approach, that is error prone. — smonff, Sep 18 '15 at 10:33

How to remove all files ending with ~ made by Emacs

7 Answers7