[ale] delete all files but leave folder structure intact

Lightner, Jeff jlightner at water.com
Tue Apr 19 14:20:05 EDT 2011


MY premise was in the first part - the second part is what YOU are
assuming was my premise.   Since I wrote it I know what the premise was.

Does this really need to be argued ad nauseum?  In my first response I
admitted that I'd misspoken in the second part and amended it to "rm -rf
.*".

-----Original Message-----
From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of
Geoffrey Myers
Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2011 1:57 PM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
Subject: Re: [ale] delete all files but leave folder structure intact

Lightner, Jeff wrote:
> No my original premise was simply to warn a newbie never try to match
> with ".*" because it does bad things.

Uh, hate to be picky, but, I quote:

"Also be sure NEVER to do "rm .*" in any directory.   Many a newbie has
surprised themselves by trying to remove .profile, .bashrc .mozilla
etc... that way.

The ".*" will match ".." which is a hard link to the parent directory so
tells it to remove a directory above."


> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of
> Geoffrey Myers
> Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2011 1:28 PM
> To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
> Subject: Re: [ale] delete all files but leave folder structure intact
> 
> Lightner, Jeff wrote:
>> No but it can remove the other files/directories below the parent.
> 
> True, but the original premise was it would remove $HOME when executed

> from $HOME.
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of
>> Geoffrey Myers
>> Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2011 12:23 PM
>> To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
>> Subject: Re: [ale] delete all files but leave folder structure intact
>>
>> Lightner, Jeff wrote:
>>> Picky picky
>>>
>>> Then don't ever do "rm -rf .*"
>> Sorry, still won't remove the directory you're sitting in:
>>
>> centosvmfoo> rm -rf .*
>> rm: cannot remove `.' or `..'
>> rm: cannot remove `.' or `..'
>>
>> :)
>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of
>>> Geoffrey Myers
>>> Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2011 7:50 AM
>>> To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
>>> Subject: Re: [ale] delete all files but leave folder structure
intact
>>>
>>> Lightner, Jeff wrote:
>>>> Also be sure NEVER to do "rm .*" in any directory.   Many a newbie
>> has
>>>> surprised themselves by trying to remove .profile, .bashrc .mozilla
>>>> etc... that way.
>>> Pretty sure that's not going to work as since you're in the
> directory,
>>> you can't remove it.  Further, you can't remove a directory with
'rm'
> 
>>> without the recursive option.
>>>
>>>
>>>> The ".*" will match ".." which is a hard link to the parent
> directory
>>> so
>>>> tells it to remove a directory above.
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of
>>>> Michael B. Trausch
>>>> Sent: Monday, April 18, 2011 3:46 PM
>>>> To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
>>>> Subject: Re: [ale] delete all files but leave folder structure
> intact
>>>> On 04/18/2011 03:22 PM, Ed Cashin wrote:
>>>>> To read into your question a bit, I'll assume you'd like to remove
>>>>> special files and symbolic links and named fifos as well as
regular
>>>>> files.
>>>>>
>>>>>   find xyz ! -type d -print0 | xargs -0 rm
>>>> Nice.  I hadn't thought of that.
>>>>
>>>> 	--- Mike
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> 
> 


-- 
Until later, Geoffrey

"I predict future happiness for America if they can prevent
the government from wasting the labors of the people under
the pretense of taking care of them."
- Thomas Jefferson
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