Remove all files except some from a directory

Question

When using sudo rm -r, how can I delete all files, with the exception of the following:

textfile.txt
backup.tar.gz
script.php
database.sql
info.txt

Answer 1

You can do this with two command sequences. First define an array with the name of the files you do not want to exclude:

files=( backup.tar.gz script.php database.sql info.txt )

After that, loop through all files in the directory you want to exclude, checking if the filename is in the array you don't want to exclude; if its not then delete the file.

for file in *; do
  if [[ ! " ${files[@]} " ~= "$file"  ]];then
    rm "$file"
  fi
done

Answer 2

You can write a for loop for this... %)

for x in *
do
        if [ "$x" != "exclude_criteria" ]
        then
                rm -f $x;
        fi
done;

Answer 3

A little late for the OP, but hopefully useful for anyone who gets here much later by google...

I found the answer by @awi and comment on -delete by @Jamie Bullock really useful. A simple utility so you can do this in different directories ignoring different file names/types each time with minimal typing:

rm_except (or whatever you want to name it)

#!/bin/bash

ignore=""

for fignore in "$@"; do
  ignore=${ignore}"-not -name ${fignore} "
done

find . -type f $ignore -delete

e.g. to delete everything except for text files and foo.bar:

rm_except *.txt foo.bar 

Similar to @mishunika, but without the if clause.

Answer 4

Just:

rm $(ls -I "*.txt" ) #Deletes file type except *.txt

Or:

rm $(ls -I "*.txt" -I "*.pdf" ) #Deletes file types except *.txt & *.pdf

Answer 5

This is similar to the comment from @siwei-shen but you need the -o flag to do multiple patterns. The -o flag stands for 'or'

find . -type f -not -name '*ignore1' -o -not -name '*ignore2' | xargs rm

Answer 6

find . | grep -v "excluded files criteria" | xargs rm

This will list all files in current directory, then list all those that don't match your criteria (beware of it matching directory names) and then remove them.

Update: based on your edit, if you really want to delete everything from current directory except files you listed, this can be used:

mkdir /tmp_backup && mv textfile.txt backup.tar.gz script.php database.sql info.txt /tmp_backup/ && rm -r && mv /tmp_backup/* . && rmdir /tmp_backup

It will create a backup directory /tmp_backup (you've got root privileges, right?), move files you listed to that directory, delete recursively everything in current directory (you know that you're in the right directory, do you?), move back to current directory everything from /tmp_backup and finally, delete /tmp_backup.

I choose the backup directory to be in root, because if you're trying to delete everything recursively from root, your system will have big problems.

Surely there are more elegant ways to do this, but this one is pretty straightforward.