Shell Programming and Scripting

I want to delete all files and folders owned a user say abcuser in the folder /tmp .
Can you please give me the command ?

Thanks
Matt

Try this first to check for the right files

Code:

find /tmp -user abcuser

And if you see the files are all correct and are the ones you want to delete, try this

Code:

find /tmp -user abcuser -exec rm -f {} \;

-ahamed

This will hit problems for directories owned by the user. If you want to delete the contents too (maybe you do, maybe you don't) then add the -r flag to the rm

To only delete files, you would be better to add the -type f ot the find command so it will only try to delete files. This will leave pipes, soft-links and directories and I suppose devices/ (exotic things they are unlikely to ever create)

Code:

find /tmp -type f -user abcuser -exec rm -f {} +

If the + is not supported, then:-

Code:

find /tmp -type f -user abcuser -exec rm -f {} \;

You don't say what OS and version, so I can't be sure if the + is supported. Using \; will issue one command for each file found. Using + will build up fewer commands will multiple files to be deleted. To see the effect, try:-

Code:

find /usr -type f -exec echo {} \; | wc -l
find /usr -type f -exec echo {} + | wc -l

For me I get two very different values. If it's available, the latter will run faster.


I hope that this helps,
Robin
Liverpool/Blackburn
UK