How exclude files / folders for remove

Question

How can I remove all in folder and exclude specific folders and files?

(As example with tar: tar --exclude="folder").

Edit: I can delete files and folders.

What do you mean by `remove`? Delete? What is that you want to accomplish? — devnull, Jun 19 '13 at 07:11
Yes - delete files. I use command rm. Sorry bad formulate question. — grogsy, Jun 19 '13 at 07:13
Thanks, [exclude directory from find . command](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4210042/exclude-directory-from-find-command) is answer. — grogsy, Jun 19 '13 at 07:24
One of the best and short command I mostly use is this below. Exclude file or folder with !(FileName, DirectoryName or Wildcard with prefix or suffix) then add -rf to recursively delete directory and files. Example: rm !(*.txt) -rf — Mahesh K., Jun 27 '20 at 13:47

score 17 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 19 '13 at 07:52

17

NOTE: Be careful running the following commands.

find . -type 'f' | grep -v "NameToExclude" | xargs rm 
find . -type 'd' | grep -v "NameToExclude" | xargs rmdir

answered Jun 19 '13 at 07:52

rein

find . -maxdepth 1 ! -name root ! -name . | xargs rm -r – qxo Nov 20 '15 at 03:07
8

How about using the ls command: rm -fr $(ls -1 --ignore=nameToExclude .) – petrica.martinescu Feb 29 '16 at 09:46
Slight modification, if you use `egrep` you can specify multiple names: `find . -maxdepth 1 | egrep -v "folder1|folder2" | xargs rm` – dev-rowbot Jan 21 '19 at 11:30

1 Answers1