How to delete only directories and leave files untouched - unix

I have hundreds of directories and files in one directory.
What is the best way deleting only directories (no matter if the directories have anything in it or not, just delete them all)
Currently I use ls -1 -d */, and record them in a file, and do sed, and then run it. It rather long way. I'm looking for better way deleting only directories

To delete all directories and subdirectories and leave only files in the working directory, I have found this concise command works for me:
rm -r */
It makes use of bash wildcard */ where star followed by slash will match only directories and subdirectories.

find . -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -type d
then
find . -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -type d -exec rm -rf '{}' \;
To add an explanation:
find starts in the current directory due to . and stays within the current directory only with -maxdepth and -mindepth both set to 1. -type d tells find to only match on things that are directories.
find also has an -exec flag that can pass its results to another function, in this case rm. the '{}' \; is the way these results are passed. See this answer for a more complete explanation of what {} and \; do

First, run:
find /path -d -type d
to make sure the output looks sane, then:
find /path -d -type d -exec rm -rf '{}' \;
-type d looks only for directories, then -d makes sure to put child directories before the parent.

Simple way :-
rm -rf `ls -d */`

find command only (it support file deletion)\
find /path -depth -type d -delete
-type d looks only for directories, then -depth makes sure to put child directories before the parent. -delete removing filtered files/folders

In one line:
rm -R `ls -1 -d */`
(backquotes)

Related

Searching for particular files in a directory non-recursively using find. AIX

I have a script which has the following command. I am trying to edit this in such a way that it only searches the files in the directory of the path without going in the subdirectories. That is not recursive search
find {Path} -name "cor*" -type f -exec ls -l {} \;
Example: The command should give cor123.log only and not cor456.log. Currently it gives both
<Path>
..cor123.log
<directory>
..cor456.log
I tried using -maxdepth but it's not supported in AIX. -prune and -depth didn't help either.
Will appreciate any help. Thanks
You can use
find . -name . -o -prune
to find files and directories non-recursively.
So in your case this one will work:
find . -name . -o -prune -name 'cor*' -type f -exec ls -l {} \;
Do you need find for selecting files only?
When you know that all files starting with cor are regula files, you can use
ls -l ${Path}/cor*
or
ls -l ${Path}/cor*.log
When you need the -type f, you can try to filter the results.
The filename can not have a /, so remove everything with an / after the Path.
We do not know the last char of ${Path}. It can be /, which will make the grep -Ev "${Path}/.*/" filter useless. After the Path at least one character is needed before looking for the next /.
find "${Path}" -name "cor*" -type f 2>/dev/null| grep -Ev "${Path}..*/" | xargs -ls
Late answer but may save some. In aix
find /some/directory/* -prune -type f -name *.log
For instance make your path have the last forward slash with a wildcard then -prune
/*
find /some/directory/* -prune -name "cor*" -type f -exec ls -l {} \
Tested.

Find and replace files from one directory to another WordPress

A site I now manage I found has been corrupted. I would like to keep the content in place, but copy all of the php, txt, and css files from a temporary WordPress installation and move them to the corresponding location using a script.
I don't know how to make a bash or shell script that does something like this:
#!/usr/bash
type = [*\.php|*\.css|*\.ini|*\.txt]
find /temporary/WordPress/ -type f -name '$type' {} + > file-paths-in-temporary-wordpress ;
egrep -o '[a-zA-Z]\.[php|css|ini|txt]' file-paths-in-temporary-wordpress > file-names-of-temporary-WordPress-Installation
find /old/installation/WordPress -type f -name '$type' {} + > file-paths-to-use-as-reference
while read $type in file-names-of-temporary-WordPress-Installation ; do
// locating file-names-of-temporary-WordPress-Installation in old WordPress site, copy files from file-paths-in-temporary-wordpress to the matching locations in the old WordPress installation //
I am confused about how to get this to work. Obviously, this is sorely incomplete.
My desired outcome is to have all of the php, ini, css, and txt files from the fresh WordPress installation copied to the corresponding location at the old WordPress site.
I can use:
find /temporary/WordPress -type f -name '*.php' -exec cp -fvr {} /old/WordPress/Installation/ + ;
find /temporary/WordPress -type f -name '*.css' -exec cp -fvr {} /old/WordPress/Installation/ + ;
..etc.
Any thoughts?
Please help. Thank you!
Why can't you just search each directory and copy if there is a match?
cp /temorary/WordPress/*.php /new/directory/
cp /temporary/WordPress/*.css /new/directory/
...
You can copy everything first and remove things you do not need:
cp -r /temporary/WordPress /old/WordPress/
find /old/WordPress/ -type f -regex ".*\.\(php\|css\|ini\|txt\)" -exec rm {} \;
This might leave empty directories and is fixing things that went wrong (copying files you do not want).
So the right approach is only copying files you need. First go to /temporary/WordPress so you do not need to cut off that dir:
cd /temporary/WordPress
find . -type f -regex ".*\.\(php\|css\|ini\|txt\)" | while read file; do
dir="/old/WordPress/${file%/*}"
mkdir -p "${dir}" 2>/dev/null
cp "${file}" "/old/WordPress/${file}"
done
(Sorry, not tested)

Move only directories and not files in Unix OS

I had a directory with many files and sub-directories. To move only the sub-directories, I just learned you can use:
ls -d BASEDIR/*/ | xargs -n1 -I% mv % TARGETDIR/
I use the following:
$ mv ./*/ DirToMoveTo
For example:
Say I wanted to move all directories with "Old" in the name to a folder called "Old_Dirs" on /data.
The command would look like this:
mv ./*Old*/ /data/
Why not use find?
find . -maxdepth 1 -type d -exec mv '{}' /tmp \;
-maxdepth 1 makes sure find won't go deeper than current directory
-type d tells find to only find directories
-exec execute a command with the result of the find referenced by {}
In my opinion a cleaner solution and it also works better then using xargs when you have files with white space or tabs in them.
With a file structure like this:
/dir2move2
/dir
/subdir1
/subdir2
index.js
To move only the sub directories and not the files you could just do:
mv ./dir/*/ ./dir2move2
Possible solution:
find BASEDIR/ -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -type d -exec mv '{}' TARGETDIR \;
you can simply use the same command for moving a file but put a slash after the name of the subdirectory
sudo mv */ path/to/destination
sudo mv subdir/ path/to/subdirectory

Copy only files from one directory to another

I'd like to copy a content of directory 1 to directory 2.
However, I'd like to only copy files (and not directories) from my directory 1. How can I do that ?
cp dir1/* dir2/*
then I still have the directories issue.
you can also use this in dir1
find . -type f -exec cp{} dir2/ \;
You may try this one
cp dir1/*.* dir2/*
try this one
find dir1 -type f -exec cp {} dir2/ \;
The currently approved solution will work, however if sub-directories exist, this will also copy the files from the subfolders as well, but instead of putting the copied files in sub folders, it will copy them to dir1.
/dir1/dir1a/test.txt will end up as dir1/test.txt
-maxdepth can be used to only copy files in dir1:
find dir1 -maxdepth 1 -type f -exec cp {} dir2/ \;

Why doesn't my 'find' work like I expect using -exec?

I'm trying to remove all the .svn directories from a working directory.
I thought I would just use find and rm like this:
find . -iname .svn -exec 'rm -rf {}' \;
But the result is:
find: rm -rf ./src/.svn: No such file or directory
Obviously the file exists, or find wouldn't find it... What am I missing?
You shouldn't put the rm -rf {} in single quotes.
As you've quoted it the shell is treating all of the arguments to -exec it as a command rather than a command plus arguments, so it's looking for a file called "rm -rf ./src/.svn" and not finding it.
Try:
find . -iname .svn -exec rm -rf {} \;
Just by-the-bye, you should probably get out of the habit of using -exec for things that can be done to multiple files at once. For instance, I would write that out of habit as
find . -iname .svn -print | xargs rm -rf
or, since I'm now using a Macintosh and more likely to encounter file or directory names with spaces in them
find . -iname .svn -print0 | xargs -0 rm -rf
"xargs" makes sure that "rm" is invoked only once every "N" files, where "N" is usually 20. That's not a huge win in this case, because rm is small, but if the program you wanted to execute on every file was large or did a lot of processing on start up, it could make things a lot faster.
maybe its just me, but the old find & rm script does not work on my current config, a la:
find /data/bin/test -type d -mtime +10 -name "[0-9]*" -exec rm -rf {} \;
whereas the xargs solution does, a la:
find /data/bin/test -type d -mtime +10 -name '[0-9]*' -print | xargs rm -rf ;
no idea why, but i've updated my scriptLib so i dont spend another couple hours beating
my head on something so simple....
(running RHEL under kernel-2.6.18-194.11.3.el5)
EDIT: found out why - my RHEL distro defaults vi to insert the dreaded cr into line breaks (whch breaks the command) - following suggestions from nx5000 & jliagre at linuxquestions.org, added the following to ~/.vimrc:
:set fileformat=unix
map <F4> :set fileformat=unix<CR>
map <F5> :set fileformat=dos<CR>
which allows the behavior to pivot on the F4/F5.
to check whether CR's are embedded in your file:
head -1 scriptFile.sh | od -c | head -1
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-general-1/bad-interpreter-no-such-file-or-directory-213617/
You can also use the svn command as follows:
svn export <url-to-repo> <dest-path>
Look here for more info.
Try
find . -iname .svn -exec rm -rf {} \;
and that probably ought to work IIRC.
You can pass anything you want in quotes, with the following trick.
find . -iname .svn -exec bash -c 'rm -rf {}' \;
The exec option will be happy to see that you're simply calling an executable with an argument, but your argument will be able to contain a script of basically any size and shape.
find . -iname .svn -exec bash -c '
ls -l "{}" | wc -l
' \;

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