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publicus

Member

Registered: 2014-01-01

Posts: 129

How to remove just the hidden files?

Hello,

Recently I tried doing this in a script:

$ rm -rf .*
rm: cannot remove directory: `.'
rm: cannot remove directory: `..'

Hmm... this isn't quite what I wanted.  Should there be any .log.txt files (for example), I'd like to remove those but not touch . and .. which gives me an annoying error.

How can I do that?

dmbrown2520

Member

From: Akron, OH, USA

Registered: 2014-06-01

Posts: 14

Re: How to remove just the hidden files?

That should still remove all the hidden files. If you want to hide the error, you can do

rm -rf .* 2&>1 > /dev/null

drcouzelis

Member

From: Connecticut, USA

Registered: 2009-11-09

Posts: 4,092

Website

Re: How to remove just the hidden files?

How can I do that?

No problem! Check out this little trick:

$ rm .??*

Which will remove all files that begin with a dot and have at least two other characters in their filename. I use that syntax all the time.

...Hmmm, now that I think about it, it won't catch filenames with only one character, such as ".a". But I've never seen a filename like that, so whatever.

Another option: Install "moreutils" and use "vidir". But that wouldn't be any good in a script.

Last edited by drcouzelis (2014-06-04 18:15:27)

publicus

Member

Registered: 2014-01-01

Posts: 129

Re: How to remove just the hidden files?

That should still remove all the hidden files. If you want to hide the error, you can do

rm -rf .* 2&>1 > /dev/null

Thanks.  I'll keep this in mind.  I don't want to hide the error though.

I have something else cooking at the moment.

publicus

Member

Registered: 2014-01-01

Posts: 129

Re: How to remove just the hidden files?

How can I do that?

No problem! Check out this little trick:

$ rm .??*

Which will remove all files that begin with a dot and have at least two other characters in their filename. I use that syntax all the time.

...Hmmm, now that I think about it, it won't catch filenames with only one character, such as ".a". But I've never seen a filename like that, so whatever.

Another option: Install "moreutils" and use "vidir". But that wouldn't be any good in a script.

*raises eyeybrows*

Interesting...

Here is what I have:

#!/bin/sh

# copy all information that is in our data directory to the current directory,
#   afterwards delete it (again, first copy, then delete, same as the pouch
#   utility.)  Do this for the hidden and not hidden files.
HIDDEN_FILES=`ls -a1 ~/.pouch/data/`

for i in $HIDDEN_FILES
do
  if [ $i != '.' ] && [ $i != '..' ]
  then
    cp -r ~/.pouch/data/$i .
    rm -rf ~/.pouch/data/$i
  fi  
done

You're more than welcome to comment on suggestions and improvements.

jasonwryan

Anarchist

From: .nz

Registered: 2009-05-09

Posts: 30,424

Website

Re: How to remove just the hidden files?

Don't parse ls...

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drcouzelis

Member

From: Connecticut, USA

Registered: 2009-11-09

Posts: 4,092

Website

Re: How to remove just the hidden files?

I'm so confused by your script... How about this to replace the whole script:

$ mv ~/.pouch/data/.??* .

alphaniner

Member

From: Ancapistan

Registered: 2010-07-12

Posts: 2,810

Re: How to remove just the hidden files?

I'd use find:

find <dir> -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -name ".*" -exec ls -ld {} +

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HiImTye

Member

From: Halifax, NS, Canada

Registered: 2012-05-09

Posts: 1,072

Re: How to remove just the hidden files?

$ rm -rf .*

you should avoid doing this to prevent it from moving up the directory tree (i.e. ../anotherFolder/). instead use something like

for f in .*; do rm -rfv "$f"; done

Last edited by HiImTye (2014-06-05 16:55:46)

drcouzelis

Member

From: Connecticut, USA

Registered: 2009-11-09

Posts: 4,092

Website

Re: How to remove just the hidden files?

$ rm -rf .*

you should avoid doing this to prevent it from moving up the directory tree (i.e. ../anotherFolder/). instead use something like

for f in .*; do rm -rfv "$f"; done

Why? Both his way and your way have the same result:

$ rm -rf .
rm: cannot remove directory: `.'

$ rm -rf ..
rm: cannot remove directory: `..'

Xyne

Administrator/PM

Registered: 2008-08-03

Posts: 6,965

Website

Re: How to remove just the hidden files?

$ rm -rf .*

you should avoid doing this to prevent it from moving up the directory tree (i.e. ../anotherFolder/). instead use something like

for f in .*; do rm -rfv "$f"; done

That does exactly the same thing. .* expands to ., .. and any dot files in the directory. Removing them with a single command or multiple commands doesn't change that.

*IF* . and .. are always listed first when expanding .* then the following will work. I came up with this quickly. I suggest that you check the official documentation of your shell to be sure that the assumption is valid.

dot_files=(.*)
rm -fr "${dot_files[@]:2}"

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HiImTye

Member

From: Halifax, NS, Canada

Registered: 2012-05-09

Posts: 1,072

Re: How to remove just the hidden files?

must be one of those things you remember from days of yore seems to be fixed now