There are several ways to do this, but my Google-fu may be weak because it took me much too long to figure this out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I want to recursively delete directories with a specific name (or names) within directory structure, UNLESS the matched directory contains a sentinel file.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In my case I want to make a C# directory structure “cleaner-than-clean” by removing all ‘bin’ and ‘obj’ directories, leaving just the user-generated files behind.\u00a0 This is pretty easy to achieve:<\/p>\n\n\n
\n#!\/bin\/env bash\n\ndir=\/path\/to\/project\n\nfind $dir -type d \\\n \\( -name 'bin' -o -name 'obj' \\)\n -print\n<\/pre><\/div>\n\n\nThis says “find things under $dir<\/code> that are directories (-type d<\/code>) and are named either ‘bin’ (-name 'bin'<\/code>) or (-o<\/code>) named ‘obj’ (-name 'obj'<\/code>).\u00a0 The parentheses force the two -name<\/code> statements to be considered as a single condition, so the effect is to return true if either item matches. If the final result is true then print the path.<\/p>\n\n\n\nNotice that I’ve escaped (\\<\/code>) the parentheses because I’m using bash. Most UNIX shells do require these to be escaped, but yours may not. I’ve also terminated each line by escaping it. A single-line command may be spread over several lines this way, making it easier to read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n‘bin’ is also the conventional name for a directory of non-build executables, like helper scripts.\u00a0 I do have some, including this cleaner-than-clean cleaning script that I’m working out, and don’t want to delete those by accident. The above command would find them, if they were in the directory tree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
find<\/code> allows you to prune (-prune<\/code>) the search tree, ignoring selective directories, according to certain criteria but it doesn’t support the concept of peeking into sub-directories. Bummer.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou may, however, execute independent commands (-exec<\/code>) and use the results of those commands to affect find<\/code>‘s parameters, including -prune<\/code>. We can exec the test command, which can tell us if our sentinel file exists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n#!\/bin\/env bash\n\ndir=\/path\/to\/project\nsentinel=.keep\n\nfind "$basedir" \\\n -type d \\\n \\( -name bin -o -name obj \\) \\\n ! -exec test -e "{}\/$sentinel" ';' \\\n -print\n<\/pre><\/div>\n\n\nThe new line executes test<\/code> to see if the current path ({}<\/code>) contains a file called $sentinel<\/code> (I’ve defined $sentinel to be .keep<\/code> but any filename will do), which returns true if it exists. The line is negated (!<\/code>) so if the sentinel is found further actions are skipped.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe final step is to actually delete the directory. We call rm -Rf<\/code> (-R<\/code> = recursive, -f<\/code> = force) because we just want the whole thing gone, no questions asked. The trailing plus (+<\/code>) tells find<\/code> that rm<\/code> can accept multiple paths in a single call, rather than calling rm once for each path.<\/p>\n\n\n\n#!\/bin\/env bash\n\ndir=\/path\/to\/project\nsentinel=.keep\n\nfind "$basedir" \\\n -type d \\\n \\( -name bin -o -name obj \\) \\\n ! -exec test -e "{}\/$sentinel" ';' \\\n -print \\\n -exec rm -Rf '{}' \\+\n<\/pre><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are several ways to do this, but my Google-fu may be weak because it took me much too long to figure this out. I want to recursively delete directories with a specific name (or names) within directory structure, UNLESS the matched directory contains a sentinel file. In my case I want to make a … Continue reading “Recursively delete directories unless a specific file is present”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[84,749,151,750,83,190],"class_list":["post-3021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-linux","tag-bash","tag-c","tag-dad-needs-to-stop-bringing-work-home","tag-dotnet","tag-linux","tag-unix"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4o3FW-MJ","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3021"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3029,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3021\/revisions\/3029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}