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Full Discussion: Delete all files with specific extension in directory tree
Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting Delete all files with specific extension in directory tree Post 302815075 by LMHmedchem on Friday 31st of May 2013 01:21:19 AM
Old 05-31-2013
Delete all files with specific extension in directory tree
I'm sure this has been asked many times, but a search didn't turn up a definitive best method for this (if there ever is such a thing).

I have been using rsync to back up my main data directory, but I have accumulated a large number of older backups that I don't need. All of the files I don't need anymore have the extension .back, so I need to troll through all of the folders and sub-folders and delete everything with the .back extension. I thought I would need to do some kind of recursive ls and pipe the results to rm, but I'm not sure what that would look like so I did a search.

Many of the solutions I found use find and look like,
Code:
find . -name *.back -exec file {} \; -exec rm -i {} \;

or
Code:
find /path . -name '*.back' -type f -delete

or
Code:
find /path -iname "*.back" -type f -delete

As usual, there appear to be many ways of doing things and I have no basis on which to make a choice. These files are copies, so I could always rebuild the backup if there was a disaster with the cleaning, but that would take time and I try to avoid putting my foot in it to that extent.

Any suggestions?

LMHmedchem
Last edited by Franklin52; 05-31-2013 at 03:17 AM.. Reason: Please use code tags
 

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LEARN ABOUT DEBIAN

mtp_objects

The object management API.(3)					      libmtp					     The object management API.(3)

NAME

       libmtp - The object management API.

   Functions
       int LIBMTP_Delete_Object (LIBMTP_mtpdevice_t *, uint32_t)
       int LIBMTP_Set_Object_Filename (LIBMTP_mtpdevice_t *, uint32_t, char *)

Detailed Description
Function Documentation
   int LIBMTP_Delete_Object (LIBMTP_mtpdevice_t *device, uint32_tobject_id)
       This function deletes a single file, track, playlist, folder or any other object off the MTP device, identified by the object ID.

       If you delete a folder, there is no guarantee that the device will really delete all the files that were in that folder, rather it is
       expected that they will not be deleted, and will turn up in object listings with parent set to a non-existant object ID. The safe way to do
       this is to recursively delete all files (and folders) contained in the folder, then the folder itself.

       Parameters:
	   device a pointer to the device to delete the object from.
	   object_id the object to delete.

       Returns:
	   0 on success, any other value means failure.

       References LIBMTP_mtpdevice_struct::params.

   int LIBMTP_Set_Object_Filename (LIBMTP_mtpdevice_t *device, uint32_tobject_id, char *newname)
       THIS FUNCTION IS DEPRECATED. PLEASE UPDATE YOUR CODE IN ORDER NOT TO USE IT.

       See Also:
	   LIBMTP_Set_File_Name()

	   LIBMTP_Set_Track_Name()

	   LIBMTP_Set_Folder_Name()

	   LIBMTP_Set_Playlist_Name()

	   LIBMTP_Set_Album_Name()

       References LIBMTP_file_struct::filetype, and LIBMTP_Get_Filemetadata().

Author
       Generated automatically by Doxygen for libmtp from the source code.

Version 1.1.3							  Sun Feb 17 2013				     The object management API.(3)
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