rm -rf *.jpg. What is wrong?

[Linus73]

hello Linuxers.

bash on redhat9,

delete all .jpg files in this folder and subfolders, thus, recursively :

rm -rf *.jpg

what am I missing ??

[mazer]

hello Linuxers.

bash on redhat9,

delete all .jpg files in this folder and subfolders, thus, recursively :

rm -rf *.jpg

what am I missing ??

-r option is used to delete a folder plus content. It does not mean that
you delete all files specified in all subfolders.

Mazer

[Giles]

Unfortunately, what

rm -rf *.jpg

does is to look for any folders with a name ending in .jpg and recursively remove such folders. In order to do what you want, I think you'd need to write a script that deals with recursion manually - I'm afraid I haven't done that myself, so i cant give an example.

Giles

[Cabhan]

Giles is mostly correct. More accurately, your command looks for all directories and files in the current directory that end in '.jpg'. It deletes all of them. If it's a directory, it does the same to all of its subdirectories.

The problem is that this only addresses directories that end in '.jpg'. Fortunately, the find command offers an easy way to fix this:

find . -iname '*.jpg' -type f -exec rm -f {} \;

This command starts in the current directory, recursing through the entire subtree, looking for files only that end with '.jpg'. It will delete any such files.

find - the find program
. - search the subtree starting in the current directory
-iname '*.jpg' - find all elements that match the shell pattern '*.jpg'. This should be done case-INsensitively
-type f - only match files
-exec rm -f {} \; - execute the command "rm -f {}" for each matched file, where '{}' is replaced with the name of the matched file.

[Linus73]

Unfortunately, what

rm -rf *.jpg

does is to look for any folders with a name ending in .jpg and recursively remove such folders. In order to do what you want, I think you'd need to write a script that deals with recursion manually - I'm afraid I haven't done that myself, so i cant give an example.

Giles

Thank you.

that is fine, I will copy-paste the rm -f *.jpg to each subfolder in bash.

[mazer]

Giles is mostly correct. More accurately, your command looks for all directories and files in the current directory that end in '.jpg'. It deletes all of them. If it's a directory, it does the same to all of its subdirectories.

The problem is that this only addresses directories that end in '.jpg'. Fortunately, the find command offers an easy way to fix this:

find . -iname '*.jpg' -type f -exec rm -f {} \;

This command starts in the current directory, recursing through the entire subtree, looking for files only that end with '.jpg'. It will delete any such files.

find - the find program
. - search the subtree starting in the current directory
-iname '*.jpg' - find all elements that match the shell pattern '*.jpg'. This should be done case-INsensitively
-type f - only match files
-exec rm -f {} \; - execute the command "rm -f {}" for each matched file, where '{}' is replaced with the name of the matched file.

I think if you just add an -delete it should do the same.

find /yourdirectory -iname '*.jpg' -delete

Mazer

[Linus73]

Thank you.

that is fine, I will copy-paste the rm -f *.jpg to each subfolder in bash.

thank you.

solved it out with this.


rm -f 11/*.jpg
rm -f 12/*.jpg
rm -f 13/*.jpg
rm -f 14/*.jpg
rm -f 15/*.jpg
rm -f 16/*.jpg
rm -f 17/*.jpg
rm -f 18/*.jpg
rm -f 19/*.jpg
rm -f 20/*.jpg
rm -f 22/*.jpg
rm -f 23/*.jpg
rm -f 24/*.jpg
rm -f 25/*.jpg
rm -f 26/*.jpg
rm -f 27/*.jpg
rm -f 28/*.jpg
rm -f 29/*.jpg
rm -f 30/*.jpg
rm -f 31/*.jpg
rm -f 32/*.jpg
rm -f 33/*.jpg
rm -f 34/*.jpg
rm -f 35/*.jpg
rm -f 36/*.jpg
rm -f 37/*.jpg
rm -f 39/*.jpg
rm -f 4/*.jpg
rm -f 40/*.jpg
rm -f 41/*.jpg
rm -f 42/*.jpg
rm -f 43/*.jpg
rm -f 44/*.jpg
rm -f 45/*.jpg
rm -f 46/*.jpg
rm -f 47/*.jpg
rm -f 5/*.jpg
rm -f 54/*.jpg
rm -f 55/*.jpg
rm -f 56/*.jpg
rm -f 57/*.jpg
rm -f 58/*.jpg
rm -f 59/*.jpg
rm -f 6/*.jpg
rm -f 60/*.jpg
rm -f 61/*.jpg
rm -f 62/*.jpg
rm -f 63/*.jpg
rm -f 64/*.jpg
rm -f 65/*.jpg
rm -f 66/*.jpg
rm -f 67/*.jpg
rm -f 68/*.jpg
rm -f 69/*.jpg
rm -f 7/*.jpg
rm -f 70/*.jpg
rm -f 71/*.jpg
rm -f 8/*.jpg
rm -f 9/*.jpg


greetings to those looking for a solution and find this..... thank you

[Linus73]

Giles is mostly correct. More accurately, your command looks for all directories and files in the current directory that end in '.jpg'. It deletes all of them. If it's a directory, it does the same to all of its subdirectories.

The problem is that this only addresses directories that end in '.jpg'. Fortunately, the find command offers an easy way to fix this:

find . -iname '*.jpg' -type f -exec rm -f {} \;

This command starts in the current directory, recursing through the entire subtree, looking for files only that end with '.jpg'. It will delete any such files.

find - the find program
. - search the subtree starting in the current directory
-iname '*.jpg' - find all elements that match the shell pattern '*.jpg'. This should be done case-INsensitively
-type f - only match files
-exec rm -f {} \; - execute the command "rm -f {}" for each matched file, where '{}' is replaced with the name of the matched file.

sweeeeeeeeeet. thank you very much.

find . -iname '*.jpg' -type f -exec rm -f {} \;

works perfectly.

[scm]

thank you.

solved it out with this.


rm -f 11/*.jpg
<SNIP>
rm -f 9/*.jpg

greetings to those looking for a solution and find this..... thank you

Blimey, if it was all jpgs in a single subdirectory then rm -f */*.jpg would do. Unless you like typing, of course!

[Linus73]

Blimey, if it was all jpgs in a single subdirectory then rm -f */*.jpg would do. Unless you like typing, of course!

Blimey.....

Definitions of Blimey on the Web:

* (Brit.) 19th-century corruption of the oath, 'God blind me'.
JoyZine - Australia Decoded: A Dictionary of Australian English: B-5

* Minced oaths are corrupted forms of (usually religion-related) swear words that originally arose in English culture sometime before the Victorian Age, as part of the cultural impact of Puritanism after the Protestant Reformation. The censorship caused people to develop a wide variety of minced oaths to avoid swearing on holy names. They were used for swearing and other types of interjections. With time they came to have a mildly comedic effect. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blimey



OK, now back to work

no, it was the same type of file (.jpg) in tens of subdirectories....