Remove all *.mp4 and *.zip but some files

Question

In one of my programs I call a bash command to remove all files in the directory, but some:

bash -c
shopt -s extglob
shopt -s nullglob
rm /path/to/directory/!("file1" | "file2")

Which for what I understand mean "Use bash on this command, use the extended pattern, remove all files but those"

It works good, but deletes every file but the ones put in the command.

What I would like is to remove all .mp4 and .zip in the directory but the ones I put in the command.

I think I'll have to add *.mp4 and *.zip somewhere in the command, but I have no idea where.

EDIT: For clarity, what I need is "Delete all .mp4 and .zip files, but keep thoses"

Answer 1

The pattern !("file1" | "file2") matches any file except file1␣ or ␣file2 where ␣ is a space. The way you quoted it is misleading: it's equivalent to !(file1 | file2) or !("file1 "|" file2)`.

There's no way in bash to combine a negative pattern with a positive pattern to say “all of these except for those”. In zsh, you can write

setopt extended_glob
rm /path/to/directory/*.(mp4|zip)~(keep*|1234.zip)

to remove this.mp4 and that.zip but not keep-this.mp4 or 1234.zip.

In bash, you can set the GLOBIGNORE variable to exclude certain patterns from all matches.

shopt -s extglob
GLOBIGNORE='keep*:1234.zip'
rm /path/to/directory/*.(mp4|zip)
unset GLOBIGNORE

Alternatively, you can use find, which lets you build arbitrarily complex boolean expressions.

find /path/to/directory \( -name '*.mp4' -o -name '*.zip' \) ! -name 'keep*' ! -name '1234.zip' -delete

Note that find recurses into subdirectories. If this isn't desired, add -maxdepth 1 after /path/to/directory.

If your find doesn't understand -maxdepth (it's common but not standard), use -type d -prune -o instead. If your find doesn't understand -delete (same remark), use -exec rm {} + instead.

Answer 2

There are several ways:

• Use find (portable as it does not need specific shell [bash])

find . -maxdepth 1 ! -name "exclude" -delete

or in case you have several patterns:

find . -maxdepth 1 ! \( -name "exclude" -o -name "exclude2" \) -exec rm -f {} \+

• Use GLOBIGNORE variable (bash only)

export GLOBIGNORE=exclude:exclude1:mask*

That will exclude mentioned files and masks from globing. After that you can specify rm your_pattern

You can try it before with ls

Answer 3

I would you find. However your problem is the spaces.

rm /path/to/directory/!("file1" | "file2")

is the same as rm "/path/to/directory/!(file1" "|" "file2)"

not rm "/path/to/directory/!(file1|file2)"

read up on the shell quoting rules.