Thread: Removing files in bulk

This morning I had to remove all .ttx files from a number of directories. The way I normally do it didn't work because there were spaces in the path (directories named "Batch 1", etc):

pabloa:~/Development$ for x in `find * -name *.ttx`; do echo $x; done | head
batch
1_Bilingua
TTX/Uncleaned/317.xml.ttx
batch
1_Bilingua
TTX/Uncleaned/670.xml.ttx
batch
1_Bilingua
TTX/Uncleaned/474.xml.ttx
batch

pabloa:~/Development$ for x in `find * -name *.ttx`; do rm $x; done
rm: cannot remove `batch': No such file or directory
rm: cannot remove `1_Bilingua': No such file or directory
rm: cannot remove `TTX/Uncleaned/317.xml.ttx': No such file or directory
rm: cannot remove `batch': No such file or directory
rm: cannot remove `1_Bilingua': No such file or directory
rm: cannot remove `TTX/Uncleaned/670.xml.ttx': No such file or directory
rm: cannot remove `batch': No such file or directory
rm: cannot remove `1_Bilingua': No such file or directory
rm: cannot remove `TTX/Uncleaned/474.xml.ttx': No such file or directory
rm: cannot remove `batch': No such file or directory

Actually the proper way of working with results found by "find" is to instruct "find" itself to execute a command:

pabloa:~/Development$ find . -name *.ttx -exec echo {} \;
./batch 2_Bilingual TTX/Uncleaned/4520.xml.ttx
./batch 2_Bilingual TTX/Uncleaned/4504.xml.ttx
./batch 2_Bilingual TTX/Uncleaned/4508.xml.ttx
./batch 2_Bilingual TTX/Uncleaned/4501.xml.ttx
./batch 2_Bilingual TTX/Uncleaned/4499.xml.ttx
./batch 2_Bilingual TTX/Uncleaned/4515.xml.ttx
./batch 2_Bilingual TTX/Uncleaned/4521.xml.ttx
./batch 2_Bilingual TTX/Uncleaned/4519.xml.ttx

Although the syntax is a bit awkward, it's worth getting used to it. Here "{}" gets replaced by the names of the files found. And the semicolon has to be escaped "to protect them from expansion by the shell" as it says in the man page.

Cheers.
P.

Guauuu! It's great to have a programmer in the gang! :-)

Originally Posted by gentle

Guauuu! It's great to have a programmer in the gang! :-)

Gentle, I'm glad you like it and I hope you find it useful. But in any case, in the same way than friends that greet each other with "how do you do?" are really saying "I love you", when I say that I do things in this or that way I'm really saying "does anyone know a better way of doing it?".

Cheers.
P.