Mdthbs

I am trying to clear multiple directories stored in an array. Here's a simplified example (I have more directories).

#!/bin/bash    



$IMAGES_DIR="/Users/michael/scripts/imagefiles"

$BACKUP_DIR="/Users/michael/scripts/imagebackups"



...



array=( $IMAGES_DIR $BACKUP_DIR )

for i in ${array[@]}

do

    if [ "$(ls -A $i)" ]; then     # check that directory has files in it

        rm "$i/"*                  # remove them 

    fi

done

I get errors for each directory, e.g.:

rm: /Users/michael/scripts/imagefiles/*: No such file or directory

How about accomplishing it all in a single command?

You can capture the file existence check, globbing and removal with one find call. In the case of GNU's version of find we'd have this:

for f in "${array[@]}"; do

     find "$f" -type f -delete

done

If you don't have GNU find use this invocation:

find "$f" -type f -exec rm -f {} +

(If instead of clearing files from the entire directory hierarchy you only want to clear files that are immediate children then add -maxdepth 1 before -type f.)

But wait, there's more....

As John1024 wisely notes you can forgo the loop altogether by passing the array as the first parameter to find:

     find "${array[@]}" -type f -delete

That's because: 1) find will accept multiple directories to be searched and processed in one execution 2) the shell will split the array such that each element (directory) becomes an individual positional parameter to find.

Change your code to this:

#!/bin/bash    



IMAGES_DIR="/Users/michael/scripts/imagefiles"

BACKUP_DIR="/Users/michael/scripts/imagebackups"



array=( $IMAGES_DIR $BACKUP_DIR )

for i in "${array[@]}"

do

    if [ "$(ls -A "$i")" ]; then     

        rm "${i:?}"/*                 

    fi

done

Errors:

1. Placing $ on the left hand side of variable assignments


2. Not quoting the $i in if [ "$(ls -A $i)" ];then
   


3. Use "${var:?}" to ensure this, rm "$i/"* never expands to /*
   

If your goal is to remove all files in an array of folders, another alternative would be to pass in the array in rm like so:

#!/bin/bash    



$IMAGES_DIR="/Users/michael/scripts/imagefiles"

$BACKUP_DIR="/Users/michael/scripts/imagebackups"



...



array=( $IMAGES_DIR $BACKUP_DIR )



# this appends "/*" to the end of each dirname if you want to delete the contents of the directories

# without deleting the directories themselves

array=( "${array[@]/%//*}" )



# this will spread the array into multiple calls to rm

rm -rf ${array[@]}

One-liner example:

rm -rf ${array[@]/%//*}

But if you want to delete the folders as well, you can just use

rm -rf ${array[@]}

One difference to note with B Layer's solution, is that while find will print any errors in finding the paths provided, rm will not in this example.

Please find the below awk oneliner to achieve the same , As tested it worked fine

i="/root/";ls -ltr /root/| grep "^-rw" | awk -v i="$i" '{print "rm -rvf" " " i$9}' | sh  

for example i have assigned variable i = path /root/ you can change as per your requirement

i="/root/" ===> path