Searching for and deleting files with a certain extension or ending with a number

Mahmoud

12/3/22, 2:54 PM

I'd like my script to find a certain file type and delete it.

I know that find path/to/directory/ -type f -name '*.ext' -delete will find and delete all files with the extension.

Now I'd also like to have my script remove any file ending with a number regardless of the extension, as well as the files ending with the extension.

I tried the following commands with no success:

find path/to/directory/ -type f -name '*.ext' -name '*[0-9].* -delete
find path/to/directory/ -type f -name '*.ext' '*[0-9].* -delete
find path/to/directory/ -type f -name '*.ext,*[0-9].* -delete

None of these worked, I'm not sure what exactly I need to change or what I am doing wrong.

1 + 0

command-line

find

Score:1

Ubuntu

steeldriver

12/3/22, 2:59 PM

remove the files ending with extension as well as any file ending with a number regardless of the extension

That requires conditions joined by logical OR instead of the default logical AND (parentheses are required because OR has lower precedence than AND, and they must be escaped or quoted so that the shell passes them to find as literals):

find path/to/directory/ -type f \( -name '*.ext' -o -name '*[0-9].*' \) -print

Change -print to -delete once you are certain that it's doing the right thing. In the GNU implementation of find, you may use -or in place of -o if you prefer.

0 + 4

Mahmoud

12/3/22, 3:01 PM

thank you for the quick respond, I'm fairly new to scripting, I suppose -o means "or" but why do I need the \ in this?

steeldriver

12/3/22, 3:04 PM

@Mahmoud the parentheses must be escaped `\(` or quoted `'('` so that the shell passes them to `find` as literals

Mahmoud

12/3/22, 3:08 PM

so I could write this ```\( -name '*.ext' -o -name '*[0-9].*' \)``` like this instead ```'( -name '*.ext' -o -name '*[0-9].*' )'``` correct?

steeldriver

12/3/22, 3:22 PM

@Mahmoud no, each individual `(` or `)` needs to be quoted as a separate token `'(' -name '*.ext' -o -name '*[0-9].*' ')'`

Elon Musk

I sit in a Tesla and translated this thread with Ai:

EN: Searching for and deleting files with a certain extension or ending with a number

TH: ค้นหาและลบไฟล์ที่มีนามสกุลเฉพาะหรือลงท้ายด้วยตัวเลข

RO: Căutarea și ștergerea fișierelor cu o anumită extensie sau care se termină cu un număr

RU: Поиск и удаление файлов с определенным расширением или оканчивающихся на номер

VI: Tìm kiếm và xóa các tệp có phần mở rộng nhất định hoặc kết thúc bằng một số

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