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ls | grep | rm -- How to format this command?

I'm trying to delete a bunch of files in a certain directory (on Mac OS X using Terminal)

ls | grep \([1-9]\) | xargs rm

should do the trick, but it doesn't. I'm trying to delete any file with a single digit in parentheses in the filename (duplicates downloaded from the web), but it ends up doing something like this:

> rm: 520syllabus2010: No such file or
> directory rm: (3).pdf: No such file or
> directory

because it doesn't interpret the space correct. It should delete "520syllabus2010 (3).pdf"

What's the proper way of doing this?

Thanks, Jeff

Removing files matching a numeric range regular expression

I have a folder which has many files. Some of the data files are labelled 1, 2, 3, ..., 300

I want to remove these data files using the terminal. How do I do this?

I want to do something like

rm some-regular-expression-giving-numbers-from-0--300

How to delete all files in a directory except some?

I need to delete all files in a directory, but exclude some of them. For example, in a directory with the files a b c ... z, I need to delete all except for u and p. Is there an easy way to do this?

Undo an "rm -rf ~" command?

I had a folder I didn't want named '~', so from the command line I typed

rm -rf ~

and accidentally deleted my home folder (since ~ resolved to /home/username). Is there any way back or do I basically need to recreate the account from scratch?

Prevent user typing accidental space between rm and wildcard

Intention:

rm -rf string*

Problem:

rm -rf string *

The first case is a legitimate and common use of rm, a small typo can cause a lot of problems in the second case. Is there a simple way to smartly protect against an accidental trailing or leading wildcard?

Mac -- remove all files with a certain extension from a directory tree [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate:
Delete files recursively matching a name on the command line (OS X)

I want to remove all files with extension .orig from my tree. The tree is deep. Is there an easy way to do that?

I will probably have to do this many times a day, with different trees. So ease is important.

Deleting millions of files

I had a dir fill up with millions of gif images. Too many for rm command.

I have been trying the find command like this:

find . -name "*.gif" -print0 | xargs -0 rm

Problem is, it bogs down my machine really bad, and causes time outs for customers since it's a server.

Is there any way that is quicker to delete all these files...without locking up the machine?

How to remove a file with unprintable charaters in Mac OS X Terminal [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate:
Removing file with strange characters in filename in OS X

I have a folder that has a file who's name is Icons and ends with an additiona unprintable character. I can see the unprintable if I ls with -B option:

$ ls -B
$ Icon\015

if I use ls -b I get:

$ ls -b
$ Icon\r

I would like to delete file but I cannot find a way to type the unprintable character. If I do:

$ rm Icon\015

I get:

$ Icon\015: No such file or directory

If I do:

$ rm Icon\r

I get:

$ Icon\r: No such file or directory

I could just delete the whole folder, but I need a more generic way to do this since such files pop up on many users folders.

Trying to delete directory with "rm -rf", but get message that it's not empty

I've tried deleting a directory using "rm -rf" and I'm getting the message "Directory not empty":

Bens-MacBook-Pro:please benjaminhocking$ ls -lart empty_directory/
total 16
drwxr-xr-x  5 benjaminhocking  staff  170 Aug 27 14:46 .
drwxr-xr-x  3 benjaminhocking  staff  102 Aug 27 15:28 ..
Bens-MacBook-Pro:please benjaminhocking$ rm -rf empty_directory/
rm: empty_directory/: Directory not empty
Bens-MacBook-Pro:please benjaminhocking$ rmdir empty_directory/
rmdir: empty_directory/: Directory not empty

If I try the same thing using Finder (dragging the folder to the Trash), I get the message

The operation can’t be completed because the item “empty_directory” is in use.

I've tried doing xattr -d com.apple.quarantine, purely out of superstition, but it did no good.

A probably important piece of context is that this directory was initially in a directory that should've been deleted by a "make clean" command I issued prior to Terminal locking up on me, after which a little over half of the other programs I had running also locked up, including Skype, and eventually the OS itself. I ended up having to reboot the computer by pressing and holding the power key.

Edit to add: Another important piece of information I left off was that this was happening in an encrypted folder à la encfs. I was able to track down the corresponding folder in the encrypted side of things and delete it there. I still don't know why I couldn't do it from the decrypted side of things like I normally do. I'll leave this unanswered for now in case anyone has a good answer for that.

Best practices to alias the rm command and make it safer

Some time ago I erroneously deleted my home folder because I ran a rm -rf * on the wrong terminal, whose working directory was the home folder!

I wish I had an alias for the rm command, but it was not the case.

Now, I am planning to make a script as an alias for rm.

Do you have any best practice to suggest?

Thanks.

`alias rm="rm -i"` considered harmful?

I have read some time ago (can't find the reference) that using such an alias as alias rm="rm -i" was very bad.

Is there historical evidence or common sense explanation for that fact?

I would imagine that it gives a user a bad habit of relying on the confirmation prompt to check his command, which could lead to disasters if he does so on another profile that doesn't have the alias.

Delete files with regular expression

I Tried to delete files that starts with A and ends with 2 numbers but It doesn't do a thing.
What I tried:

rm ^A*[0..9]2$

Where am I wrong?

use rm to remove files and directories recursively

is it possible to use rm to remove files and directories matching a pattern recursively without using other commands?

How can I remove a file or directory called "\"?

I'm using terminal on a Ubuntu machine and there is a file that I would like to delete. The file's name is \ (just a backslash).

Now usually I would just do

rm filename

However if I do rm \ then it thinks I'm trying to write a multi-line command.

How can I delete this file? I know that I could just use the GUI file system, but that's not very efficient.

So, how can I delete (in terminal) a file called \?

Linux – cannot remove owned file with 777 permissions

I've couple of files that I cannot remove using rf -Rf command. I'm the owner of those file and the group assigned to those files is also a group my user is in. What's even weirder is that I can edit their content and I can change the permissions for them, but I can't move or delete them.

ls -al
total 12
dr-xr-xr-x 3 rayell pg1083760 4096 2010-10-10 10:00 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 rayell pg1083760 4096 2011-09-02 04:33 ..
-rwxrwxrwx 1 rayell pg1083760    0 2011-09-02 06:38 default.settings.php
drwxrwxrwx 2 rayell pg1083760 4096 2011-09-02 04:33 files
-rwxrwxrwx 1 rayell pg1083760    0 2011-09-02 06:38 settings.php


rm -Rf *
rm: cannot remove `default.settings.php': Permission denied
rm: cannot remove directory `files': Permission denied
rm: cannot remove `settings.php': Permission denied

Can anyone tell me what is happening?