Sed command to remove everything following the colon

Question

I have the collection of text files containing/not the phrase (B core file).

Then I tried this:

sudo find / -type f -name core | xargs file | grep 'B core file' | sed 's/:ELF.*//g' | xargs rm -f 

To remove specific files with the phrase "B core file".

But that command won't work.

I'm hoping for the solution. Thank you very much.

Answer 1

Only the find command will be run with root permissions. The rm will be run with your user id and because of this will fail. Put the whole command in a script and run the script with sudo.

You can also use an extra sudo for each command, which access the files, which are probably not readable or writable for you:

sudo find / -type f -name core | xargs sudo file | sudo grep 'B core file' | sed 's/:ELF.*//g' | xargs sudo rm -f 

Answer 2

That looks overly complicated.

try:

grep -l 'B core file' * | xargs rm

It will remove files containing 'B core file' from the directory you're standing in when running this.