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Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting Delete all files with specific extension in directory tree Post 302816055 by rbatte1 on Monday 3rd of June 2013 08:35:11 AM
Old 06-03-2013
Oh dear, I'm classing myself as a geek. Well, if the name fits, ......

The way you have tried, the shell will expand *.back before trying to run the command. If you happend to have a file at the top level called this.back then the command actually run will become:-
Code:
find . -name this.back -exec file {} \; -exec rm -i {} \;

so you will not actually match anything other than the file at the top level.

The others are various errors. What jaiseaugustine has suggested is the correct format for you. It will pass in *.back as it is to the find command and then it can be used for pattern matching.

If there are no files at the top level, you might get away with it depending how your shell reacts, but if there is more that one file called *.back, e.g. this.back & that.back, then you will probably get the error:-
Code:
find: There is a missing conjunction

because the shell will try to run:-
Code:
find . -name that.back this.back -exec rm {} ;

I hope that this clarifies things a bit.



Robin
Liverpool/Blackburn
UK
These 2 Users Gave Thanks to rbatte1 For This Post:
 

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OPENVT(1)							     Linux 1.x								 OPENVT(1)

NAME
openvt - start a program on a new virtual terminal (VT). SYNOPSIS
openvt [-c vtnumber] [-s] [-u] [-l] [-v] [--] command command_options DESCRIPTION
openvt will find the first available VT, and run on it the given command with the given command options, standard input, output and error are directed to that terminal. The current search path ($PATH) is used to find the requested command. If no command is specified then the environment variable $SHELL is used. OPTIONS -c vtnumber Use the given VT number and not the first available. Note you must have write access to the supplied VT for this to work. -s Switch to the new VT when starting the command. The VT of the new command will be made the new current VT. -u Figure out the owner of the current VT, and run login as that user. Suitable to be called by init. Shouldn't be used with -c or -l. -l Make the command a login shell. A - is prepended to the name of the command to be executed. -v Be a bit more verbose. -w wait for command to complete. If -w and -s are used together then openvt will switch back to the controlling terminal when the com- mand completes. -- end of options to openvt. NOTE
If openvt is compiled with a POSIX (GNU) getopt() and you wish to set options to the command to be run, then you must supply the end of options -- flag before the command. EXAMPLES
openvt can be used to start a shell on the next free VT, by using the command: openvt bash To start the shell as a login shell, use: openvt -l bash To get a long listing you must supply the -- separator: openvt -- ls -l HISTORY
Earlier, openvt was called open. It was written by Jon Tombs <jon@gtex02.us.es or jon@robots.ox.ac.uk>. The -w idea is from "sam". SEE ALSO
chvt(1), doshell(8), login(1) 19 Jul 1996 V1.4 OPENVT(1)
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