Remove everything except? [duplicate]

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Remove all files but one with rm

In unix, to remove zip files in a directory one can simply type

rm *.zip

How can one remove everything except zip files?

James T · Accepted Answer · 2011-01-17 03:58:22Z

up vote 2 down vote accepted

rm !(*.zip)

This appears to work. The ! represents "not".

extglob needs to be enabled in the shell behavior settings for this to work. It is probably already enabled... but if not, enable it with:

shopt -s extglob

And after answering this... indeed Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams you are correct. It is pretty much duplicate.

edited Jan 17 '11 at 3:58

answered Jan 17 '11 at 3:42

James T
4,8211018

Dan M. · Answer 2 · 2011-01-17 03:55:48Z

up vote 0 down vote

Try creating a list then removing the file from the list.

Ex.

ls $yourDir | grep -v .zip > deleteThis.list

the call

xargs rm < deleteThis.list

answered Jan 17 '11 at 3:55

Dan M.
1,30666

	Why not just `rm $(ls \| grep -v *.zip)` ? :) – John T Jan 17 '11 at 4:02
	There's that too! :) – Dan M. Jan 17 '11 at 16:28

marked as duplicate by Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams, Troggy♦ Jan 17 '11 at 4:11