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I have seen other threads about deleting a certain extension in a directory. However, when I try it, it seems to work but takes a long time to go through directories and say "Permission denied" on the system ones. All I want is a bash script that goes through the entire computer, or part of it, and deletes a certain extension. If python would be faster that is fine.

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would it be dangerous if it is just deleting a certain extension... what could go wrong? – user1920468 Dec 21 '12 at 2:48
What do you mean by extension? Like, a Python module? – kuyan Dec 21 '12 at 2:55
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What are you really trying to do? – billybob Dec 21 '12 at 3:19
I mean a file extension. – user1920468 Dec 21 '12 at 3:42

migrated from stackoverflow.com Dec 21 '12 at 4:20

2 Answers

up vote 2 down vote

You could just use find I guess.

find / -name "*.myextension" -exec rm {} \;

But of course, searching a whole HDD (or partition..) from / is a long thing to do, and you will get permission denied errors as long as you're not running this as root.

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Would python be faster? – user1920468 Dec 21 '12 at 2:47
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Because it's a fork for every single rm. You should either use -exec rm -- {} +, or the GNU find -delete. – ormaaj Dec 21 '12 at 7:29
Or pipe find output into xargs rm, making suitable effort to handle filenames with whitespace – glenn jackman Dec 21 '12 at 12:08
@glennjackman May you please exactly what command to use for doing the same thing but making it work with spaces? Where would I put xargs rm? – user1920468 Dec 21 '12 at 18:10
up vote 1 down vote

using xargs, assuming you have GNU find and xargs:

find / -name \*.myextension -print0 | xargs -0 rm

This method uses the null char \0 as the separator between filenames: since newline is a legal character in a filename, reading find's output line-by-line is not 100% safe.

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It says file: invalid option -- a file: invalid option -- t Usage: file [-bchikLNnprsvz0] [-e test] [-f namefile] [-F separator] [-m magicfiles] [-M magicfiles] file... file -C -m magicfiles Try file --help' for more information.` – user1920468 Dec 21 '12 at 20:50
I am on a Mac, could that be the problem? – user1920468 Dec 21 '12 at 20:52
No, typo, should be find not file – glenn jackman Dec 22 '12 at 3:55
I'm sorry to trouble you, but I named a file "with spaces.myextension" and put it on the desktop. I then did the command find /users/<myusername>/Desktop -name \*.myextension -print0 | xargs -0 rm and the file remained there. – user1920468 Dec 22 '12 at 15:32
Do you see it with find /users/<myusername>/Desktop -name \*.myextension -print ? – glenn jackman Dec 22 '12 at 22:48
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