UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi All,

Thanks in advance for reading and any posts...

I have to delete a lot of files (about 6 pages of a4 (ls -ltr)) but I have to keep some as well. I would normally do an rm * to get rid of them all, but thats not what I want to do. Is there anyway I could rm * but add in a list of files that I don't want to delete.

Thanks for reading and any posts,

Mark.

put a list of "keeper files" into goodfiles then

Code:

ls -1 | grep -v -f goodfiles | \
while read file
do
       rm -f $file
done

Thanks for the replay will try making a small shell script with it... thanks Mark...

When I run that I get the following error:

grep: illegal option -- f
Usage: grep -hblcnsviw pattern file . . .
[2] + Done(2) ls -1 | grep -v -f goodfiles | \;while read filee

Any ideas????

Thanks again,

B14...aka... marky mark....

Check if your grep supports -v and -f options...

type

Code:

man grep

at the command prompt

If you are on Sun Solaris box, some options are supported by

Code:

/usr/xpg4/bin/grep

and some options are supported by

Code:

/usr/bin/grep

Give the entire path of grep...

See if it works!!

yeah it works but under solaris you need to use /usr/xpg4/bin/grep in order to get it to work....

...sorry for the slow response had a few other things that took priotry...

Thanks again,

B14... aka... marky mark

Come across a possibly simpiler way (un specified way), you can do the following if you want delete old files:

This essentially will allow you delete all files in a directory over a certain age, not sure if this is of interest to anyone but it will sort out my problem, I am guessing that you could do something similar with the above as well so that you can delete a pile of files