3 Ways to Delete All Files in a Directory Except One or Few Files with Extensions

Sometimes you get into a situation where you need to delete all files in a directory or simply cleanup a directory by removing all files except files of a given type (ending with a particular extension).

In this article, we will show you how to delete files in a directory except certain file extensions or types using rm, find and globignore commands.

Before we move any further, let us start by briefly having a look at one important concept in Linux – filename pattern matching, which will enable us to deal with our issue at hand.

Suggested Read: Use find Command to Search Multiple Filenames/Extensions in Linux

In Linux, a shell pattern is a string that consists of the following special characters, which are referred to as wildcards or metacharacters:

1. * – matches zero or more characters
2. ? – matches any single character
3. [seq] – matches any character in seq
4. [!seq] – matches any character not in seq

      ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

                                                    ► Read more: http://adf.ly/1n5YOd

      ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬