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I need to find and delete all files in subdirectories that are not .SQL files. I can't figure out how to search for <>.SQL or !.SQL in Windows Search.

Most of the solutions that I've seen here are to find specific extensions and do something with them. I'm looking for the opposite.

Nico
  • 153

3 Answers3

10

I don't know of a way to do it from Windows Search, but from the command line it is:

dir /s /b /a-d | findstr /v /r ".*\.sql"
  • dir /s - recursive directory listing
  • /b - bare listing, only file names (no directory size info etc. in the output)
  • /a-d - filter by attributes, not directory (remove sub directories from the listing)
  • | (pipe) - send the output of the directory listing to
  • findstr - text search utility
  • /v - only return lines that don't match
  • /r - use regular expressions
  • ".*.sql" - match anything any number of times followed by a dot followed by sql
shf301
  • 7,972
4

In Windows 10 (I'm on version 1803) I use the Search box in File Explorer and type

*.* kind:-jpg

to find all files which are not jpg in my pictures folders (so, videos etc). Perhaps you should try

*.* kind:-sql
Lawrence
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4

If you insist on using Windows search which doesn't have a native ability or support for such a feature, you could simply run it this way:

*.a OR *.b OR *.c OR *.d OR *.e OR *.f OR *.g OR *.h OR *.i OR *.j OR *.k OR *.l OR *.m OR *.n OR *.o OR *.p OR *.q OR *.r OR *.t OR *.u OR *.v OR *.w OR *.x OR *.y OR *.z

Following search will exclude all files with .s* extensions, while listing all others.

Perhaps there is a better way to do it, but this should work as well.

jjj
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