Delete all hidden files recursively in current directory

Question

I have a directory which contains hidden files and by that I mean, not just the files whose name starts with . but also the files whose name contains ~ character at the end like somefile.txt~.

I want to delete only those files (the remaining files need to be unaffected) in an efficient way.

How I can achieve that with a single command ?

Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr.

One way of doing this is rm $(ls -a | grep -e "^\.[a-zA-Z0-9_ ].*" -e ".*~") Perhaps a bit wordy, but is does the job without deleting anything it should not. — SE - stop firing the good guys, Jun 24 '16 at 11:56

Wayne_Yux · Answer 1 · 2016-06-24T11:51:06.013

3

Not really one single command, but why make it more complicated than necessary?

find -type f -name ".*" -delete; rm *~

The first command removes all files starting with . and the second one all ending with ~

edited Jun 24 '16 at 11:51

answered Jun 24 '16 at 11:44

Wayne_Yux

4,873

1

Not working, got following error: rm: cannot remove ‘.’: Is a directory rm: cannot remove ‘..’: Is a directory – Vicky Dev Jun 24 '16 at 11:46
ah yes, I overlooked this. This is because .* is also expanded to the directories . and ...which cannot be deleted. See my edit for an alternative command that does not cause the error. – Wayne_Yux Jun 24 '16 at 11:52
Confirmed to work. – SE - stop firing the good guys Jun 24 '16 at 12:02
Still not working for me, I have hidden files with name ending in ~, but they aren't deleted. – Vicky Dev Jun 24 '16 at 12:08
are they found with ls *~? are they write-protected? – Wayne_Yux Jun 24 '16 at 12:15
Nope, not getting by that command either. Not even with ls -R *~ . – Vicky Dev Jun 27 '16 at 05:03
what about ls *~*? – Wayne_Yux Jun 28 '16 at 11:22

Delete all hidden files recursively in current directory

1 Answers1