Remove files/folders that start with "."

Question

This command:

rm -rf "$HOME/.quicklock/locks/"*

does seem to remove files or folders in the locks directory, which start with "."

how can I remove those files too? Any other filenames that would fail to be removed given that command?

Alexander, should the Q read “does *not* seem to remove...”? — Jeff Schaller, Apr 19 '18 at 23:23
If you want to remove everything, why not `rm -rf "$HOME/.quicklock/lock" && mkdir $HOME/.quicklock/lock`? — tachomi, Apr 20 '18 at 00:09
@tachomi that's probably the right idea lol, but maybe some race conditions if the dir does not exist, but I can handle that — Alexander Mills, Apr 20 '18 at 00:43

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 20 '18 at 03:04

1

You can use a clever combination of wildcards to avoid . and ..:

rm -fr .??*

would be one of them, which works if you don't have any files or directories that are only 2 characters long (like .x for example).

rm -fr .[!.]*

does that job better.

edited Apr 20 '18 at 03:04

muru

answered Apr 19 '18 at 23:24

Francisco

Would miss a directory or file named `.X`, unfortunately. – Jeff Schaller Apr 19 '18 at 23:34
Huh, that *is* unexpected. And ".X" seems to be specifically the issue. Longer filenames are no trouble... – Francisco Apr 19 '18 at 23:41
each question mark requires a character.... – Jeff Schaller Apr 19 '18 at 23:43
Okay that makes more sense... the .??* is something I came up with years ago and to which I never gave any more thought. To be fair, I never had to deal with 2-character file/directory names. I found [this](https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/77127/rm-rf-all-files-and-all-hidden-files-without-error/313388), and updated the answer. – Francisco Apr 19 '18 at 23:52

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 21 '18 at 14:54

0

I got a suggestion to do this:

rm -rf "$HOME/.quicklook/locks";
mkdir -p "$HOME/.quicklock/locks";

should work, I guess.

edited Apr 21 '18 at 14:54

Jeff Schaller

answered Apr 20 '18 at 01:38

Alexander Mills

1

of course invites race conditions if other processes expect `"$HOME/.quicklock/locks"` to always exist, but nothing that mkdir -p can't solve if I just use that command elsewhere. – Alexander Mills Apr 20 '18 at 01:39
SO and SE Unix/Linux is not a forum board where you go and add a comment on previous comment it works like question and answers kind of thinkg – Apr 20 '18 at 01:52
sorry I don't follow...I add comments to my answers all the time – Alexander Mills Apr 20 '18 at 02:00

2 Answers2