Remove all except one file and directory at path

Question

I need to remove all the files in a directory except for one file and one folder. Up to the grep I can output the correct list of items I want to remove but when i add xags, nothing is deleted.

this is the command I'm using.

ls domain.com/wp-content/themes | grep -v -E 'twentyeleven|index.php'  | xargs rm -rf

Answer 1

you could solve this with some more diagnosis,

the command does work in practice, on a simple example.

So all you have to do is a bit of troubleshooting.

It looks like you have done troubleshooting to the point of finding ls domain.com/wp-content/themes | grep -v -E 'twentyeleven|index.php'
looks good.

Try ls file1 file2 file3 from within that directory. | rm -rf

Try echo file1 file2 file3 | rm -rf

Try another directory, maybe there's some issue with that. Basic troubleshooting will take you much further possibly to the solution.

Here is an example that works. Tested in cygwin.

user@iar ~/aa
$ ls | grep -v -E "op"
er
qw
ty
ui

user@iar ~/aa
$ ls | grep -v -E "op" | xargs rm -rf

user@iar ~/aa
$ ls
op

user@iar ~/aa
$

Answer 2

First of all, you want to use ls -1 (number 1, not lowercase L) if you want to use grep on it's output.

But the main problem is, that you list the contents of a subdirectory, but the rm command is executed in the current directory.

For example see this directory tree (. and .. entries omitted)

 a/
 a/x
 a/y
 a/z

Let's say you want to remove all from directory a except file y and use the command as you tried:

 $ ls -1 a | grep -v 'y'  | xargs rm -rf

ls -1 a gives:

 x
 y
 z

grep filters out the line with y:

 x
 z

so xargs excutes the following command:

 rm x z

But it executes the command in the top-level directory and sees only directory a, not the files x and z.

In order to make it work, you need the path of the files - easily achieved by applying a minor change to the ls command. Also we refine the grep pattern a bit:

 ls -1d a/* | grep -v '/y$'  | xargs rm -rf

So this time ls produces the following output:

 a/x
 a/y
 a/z

and the final command executed would be rm -rf a/x a/z

So now let's go back to your command line and apply the discussed changes:

 $ ls -1d domain.com/wp-content/themes/* | grep -v -E '/twentyeleven$|/index.php$'  | xargs rm -rf

One last note: Using xargs rm -rf is always venturesome (although sometimes neccessary) - be sure to check the output of the grep command first!