Deleting all files but some on Mac in Terminal

Question

Is it possible to write a command in Terminal that would delete all files on Mac except for some?

Let’s say I have one general folder that consists of N folders with different titles/names. I need to keep all the folders. Yet, I need to delete all files within them except for photos. These photo-files have different names but all start with “image-” in title.

Is there any command that would mean “please, delete everything in these folders except for jpges that start with “image-“?

To make it like this:

Thanks!

Answer 1

You can use find as follows (replace one general folder [before] as necessary):

find "one general folder [before]" -type f -not -iname "image-*jpg" -exec rm {} \;

The option -type f selects only files (that is, it excludes folders, symlnks, sockets and other "special" files).

The option -iname "image-*jpg" is a case-insensitive search that selects all JPEG images that start with image-' (or other case combinations like IMAGE- or Image-. If you prefer an exact match, use -name instead). Since this option is prepended by -not, the search is reversed, so that find selects all files except JPEG images that start with image-.

The option -exec rm {} \; deletes all files found by find.

I've tested it with a folder structure similar to the one you show in your screenshot and am confident it works as intended, but I strongly recommend that you do the following before running the command above:

1. Make a copy of your data (for example, duplicate the affected folder)
2. Make sure that find selects the correct files by running find "one general folder [before]" -type f -not -iname "image-*jpg" -print. This command should list all files that are not JPEG files whose name starts with image-.

For more information on find, see https://ss64.com/mac/find.html or run man find in Terminal.

Answer 2

First of all, it is important to remember that it is not Terminal that executes the commands, but the shell that runs inside it. On a reasonably recently created user account on a Mac, that shell will be zsh.

If you’re running zsh, it should be possible to list all files that do not match the pattern image-*.jpg using

setopt extended_glob
echo **/^image-*.jpg(.)

** matches the current working directory and any subdirectories, ^ inverts the following pattern, and (.) limits the whole thing to match only ordinary files (and not, for example, directories). For details, see the Filename Generation section of the zsh manual, or run man zshexpn.

If the list looks ok, then re-run the second command but with rm instead of echo.

WARNING 1: It is easy to slip up with these things, and I cannot promise that I have not accidentally given you a command that wipes something you did not intend to. Please check the output of the echo command carefully. Making a backup, as suggested by another answer, isn’t a bad idea either.

WARNING 2: If there are too many files, this will exceed the maximum allowed command size, and fail. In that case, the find solution given in another answer is probably the way to go.