Delete all files which are not in a given list of files

Question

$ cat file_list
abc
def
ghi

I wanted to delete all files on the machine that are not in the file_list

How do I do that ?

All files where? In a particular directory, or anywhere on the machine? — chepner, Jan 27 '17 at 21:16
Your machine is going to look very empty afterwards (just 3 files) and you won't even be able to run `ls`, `cat` or `reboot` since none of them are in the list... is that what you want? — Mark Setchell, Jan 27 '17 at 21:20
This sounds like an XY problem; are you trying to restore your machine to a known state? That's what backups are for. — chepner, Jan 27 '17 at 21:21
@chepner Please assume that I am not going to delete useful system utilities etc. The given file_list is only an example list. — Ankur Agarwal, Jan 27 '17 at 21:24
This may already be answered [here](http://unix.stackexchange.com/q/127268/34334). — merlin2011, Jan 27 '17 at 21:27
Is your list of bare basenames, or of paths? If `cat` is in the list, does that mean you want to keep both `/bin/cat` and `/tmp/cat`? — Charles Duffy, Jan 27 '17 at 21:32
Related: [BashFAQ #36](http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/036) — Charles Duffy, Jan 27 '17 at 21:37
Delete them how? You can just not do it... You included "find" in the tags but provide no context what so ever in your question. — Ulises André Fierro, Jan 27 '17 at 21:47

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 27 '17 at 21:35

3

Assuming you're not going to delete all the files, here is a command to delete all files and directories under a given path only:

grep -ZzxFvf file_list <(find . -mindepth 1 -printf "%P\0") | xargs -0p rm -rf

answered Jan 27 '17 at 21:35

anubhava

1

Hmm. `%P` prunes the leading `./`, so this'll match bare names only if the files found are directly in the current directory -- that may be what the OP wants, but it's hard to tell. – Charles Duffy Jan 27 '17 at 21:39

1 Answers1