delete all directories except one

Question

So using the shell, and having a directory:

./parent
./parent/one
./parent/two
./parent/three
./parent/four

i want to do something like rm -rf parent/* in one command, but keeping one directory, for example 'four', so the end result would be

./parent
./parent/four

Etan Reisner · Accepted Answer · 2015-12-03T03:26:09.573

46

With bash you can do this with the extglob option of shopt.

shopt -s extglob
cd parent
rm -rf !(four)

With a posix shell I think you get to use a loop to do this

for dir in ./parent/*; do
    [ "$dir" = "four" ] && continue
    rm -rf "$dir"
done

or use an array to run rm only once (but it requires arrays or using "$@")

arr=()
for dir in ./parent/*; do
    [ "$dir" = "four" ] && continue
    arr+=("$dir")
done
rm -rf "${arr[@]}"

or

for dir in ./parent/*; do
    [ "$dir" = "four" ] && continue
    set -- "$@" "$dir"
done
rm -rf "$@"

or you get to use find

find ./parent -mindepth 1 -name four -prune -o -exec rm -rf {} \;

or (with find that has -exec + to save on some rm executions)

find ./parent -mindepth 1 -name four -prune -o -exec rm -rf {} +

Oh, or assuming the list of directories isn't too large and unwieldy I suppose you could always use

rm -rf parent/*<ctrl-x>*

then delete the parent/four entry from the command line and hit enter where <ctrl-x>* is readline's default binding for glob-expand-word.

edited Dec 03 '15 at 03:26

answered Dec 03 '15 at 03:18

Etan Reisner

5

Excellent answer. I normally just `mv` the directory and delete everything else. ;) +1 – erip Dec 03 '15 at 03:20
@erip Heh, yeah that's certainly a much easier route in many cases. Though `extglob` is almost as simple. – Etan Reisner Dec 03 '15 at 03:22
2

Careful! That `find` as written will also match `./parent` ! – pilcrow Dec 03 '15 at 03:25
1

Perfect! went with find ./parent -mindepth 1 -name four -prune -o -exec rm -rf {} + – André Alçada Padez Dec 03 '15 at 03:39
1

This is just the correct form of that find example from OP `find ./ -mindepth 1 -name four -prune -o -exec rm -rf {} \;` – Jasmeet Singh May 11 '20 at 13:15
Can you explain **why** or **how** the Ctrl-X works? A documentation link would be helpful. Thanks. – Diego May 15 '21 at 19:31
The `-mindepth 1` parameter ensures that the `find` command will not delete the `./parent` folder. – Tom Nguyen Mar 04 '23 at 17:08

Gediz GÜRSU · Answer 2 · 2022-05-18T10:34:44.633

19

Easiest and practical way in my opinion is to move the exception to parent folder, delete everthing move it back

mv exceptionFolder ..
rm -rf *
mv ../exceptionFolder .

Edit: If there is no parent directory

mkdir todelete
mv * todelete/
mv todelete/exceptionFolder .
rm -rf todelete

edited May 18 '22 at 10:34

answered Mar 02 '21 at 09:15

Gediz GÜRSU

score 8 · Answer 3 · edited Oct 27 '21 at 17:07

8

Another way would be to

rm -r $(ls -A | grep -v important_folder)

ls -A lists all files and folders (other than . and ..).

grep -v expression removes anything matching the grep expression from the list.

edited Oct 27 '21 at 17:07

Shane Bishop

answered Oct 27 '21 at 15:42

Uttarayan

1

You can also add the `-E` flag to grep to use capture groups and `|` and then you can easily add more folders: `grep -vE "(file1)|(file2)"` finds everything except those two files. – Mitchell Skaggs Dec 30 '21 at 10:49
You can also add the `-x` flag to grep to match full lines (in case any other folders include the name of the folder to save) – Mitchell Skaggs Dec 30 '21 at 10:50

Ernestyno · Answer 4 · 2020-11-28T10:24:30.647

You can do it with find

 find . -maxdepth 1 ! -name foldder_name -type d -not -path '.' -exec rm -rf {} +

find - Its command search files/directories

-maxdepth 1 - Do not find for foldder_name subcategories

. ! -name foldder_name - It means search in current directory . and do not fide this file with his actual name: ! -name foldder_name

-type d - find only directories

-not -path '.' - do not found hidden folders

-exec rm -rf {} + - remove all found data

4 Answers4