Remove symbolic links only from a folder in tcsh

Question

I need to remove a large number of symbolic links from a folder that has other files which I don't want to remove. Is there any easy way to remove only symbolic links?

Stack Overflow is a site for programming and development questions. You should use another site on the [Stack Exchange network](https://stackexchange.com/sites) for this question. — jww, Dec 30 '18 at 18:51

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited Dec 30 '18 at 16:17

1

You can use the find(1) command

 find . -maxdepth 1 -type l -exec rm {} \;

-maxdepth 1 is for only scanning current directory.
-type l is for searching symbolic links
-exec executes rm to delete given file, the {} being replaced by find with an appropriate path, and the \; ending the sub-command run by find

See also the man page of rm(1) (and of ls(1), mv(1), cp(1), ln(1), stat(1) if you want to use them in a variant of that find command).

edited Dec 30 '18 at 16:17

Basile Starynkevitch

223,805
18
296
547

answered Dec 30 '18 at 14:02

Derviş Kayımbaşıoğlu

28,492
4
50
72

that looks neat. Could you explain it? – ZakS Dec 30 '18 at 14:06
1

I added a link to the documentation of `find`. Please take time to read it – Basile Starynkevitch Dec 30 '18 at 14:10
@Simonare is there anyway to ensure I don't actually remove the folders which each link points to? – ZakS Dec 30 '18 at 14:41
1

You can replace rm with ls – Derviş Kayımbaşıoğlu Dec 30 '18 at 14:43
@Simonare I don't want to delete the files, only the soft link. Moving the softlinks would also be an option -- would u be able to adapt this script to move the files instead? – ZakS Dec 30 '18 at 14:57
1

@ZakS: Read again [find(1)](http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/find.1.html). And also [rm(1)](http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/rm.1.html) and [mv(1)](http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/mv.1.html). And *you* should be able to adapt the command – Basile Starynkevitch Dec 30 '18 at 15:33
1

Rm only deletes symbolic link – Derviş Kayımbaşıoğlu Dec 30 '18 at 16:06

Remove symbolic links only from a folder in tcsh

1 Answers1

Linked