How do I delete symlinks that's pointing to files in a certain folder?

Question

I think this is best explain with an example:

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root   root      21 Mar 31 08:44 awk -> /etc/alternatives/awk*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root   root     45K Apr  8  2015 b43-fwcutter*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root   root      35 Apr  1 21:42 backup-config -> /home/myuser/scripts/backup-config.sh
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root   root      37 Apr  1 21:42 backup-to-server -> /home/myuser/scripts/backup-to-server.sh

I want to delete all the symlinks that pointing to files inside /home/myuser/scripts.

In this example. I want backup-config and backup-to-server to get deleted.

Thanks!

ps. I have other symlinks in the folder that I want to delete but it doesn't start with backup so I cannot really use a pattern.

Answer 1

Loop over the files and match the symlinks against a pattern. This should work for direct links with absolute paths (not something like ../../something, or things that jump through multiple symlinks.)

for f in * ; do
    [ -L "$f" ] || continue;                      # skip anything but symlinks
    l=$(readlink "$f")                            # read the link contents
    case "$l" in 
        /home/myuser/scripts/*) echo rm "$f" ;;   # match against a pattern
    esac
done