find + delete only the files that end with .index

Question

We have a Kafka production machine on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

How can we remove all the files under /var/kafka/kafka-logs that end with .index?
How can we move all the files that end with .index to another folder, /var/tmp/INDEX_BACKUP?

Example contents under /var/kafka/kafka-logs:

./hd3gd.ewhd.pri.processed-98/00000000000000000011.index
./hd3gd.ewhd.pri.processed-99/00000000000000000000.index
./hd3gd.ewhd.suspected_relations-0/00000000000000000000.index
./hd3gd.ewhd.suspected_relations-1/00000000000000000000.index
./hd3gd.ewhd.suspected_relations-2/00000000000000000000.index
./hd3gd.ewhd.suspected_relations-3/00000000000000000000.index
./hd3gd.ewhd.suspected_relations-4/00000000000000000000.index
./hd3gd.ewhd.suspected_relations-5/00000000000000000000.index
./frfwjnwe.fwefew.heartbeat-0/00000000000000000000.index
./frfwjnwe.fwefew.heartbeat-1/00000000000000000000.index
./frfwjnwe.fwefew.heartbeat-1/00000000000000017239.index
./frfwjnwe.fwefew.heartbeat-2/00000000000000000000.index
./frfwjnwe.fwefew.heartbeat-2/00000000000000017238.index

score 5 · Accepted Answer · edited May 14 '18 at 12:59

to remove all files ending with .index under /var/kafka/kafka-logs, using GNU find or compatible:

find /var/kafka/kafka-logs -name \*.index -delete

POSIXly:

find /var/kafka/kafka-logs -name \*.index -exec rm -f {} +

to move them to another folder, with GNU mv:

find /var/kafka/kafka-logs -name \*.index -exec mv -t /var/tmp/INDEX_BACKUP {} +

POSIXly:

find /var/kafka/kafka-logs -name \*.index -exec sh -c '
  exec mv "$@" /var/tmp/INDEX_BACKUP/' sh {} +

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 14 '18 at 11:11

0

Ad.1.:

find /var/kafka/kafka-logs -type f -name "*.index" -exec rm -v {} \;

Answer for the second question you can find here: How to integrate mv command after find command?.

answered May 14 '18 at 11:11

mariaczi

549
2
6

Sasha Golikov · Answer 3 · 2018-05-23T13:24:00.663

0

Such command will work faster (comparing with find / -exec) due to larger arguments to rm command at once. This not requires GNU find.

Q1.

find /var/kafka/kafka-logs -type f -name "*.index" | xargs rm

Q2.

find /var/kafka/kafka-logs -name "*.index" | xargs -I {} mv {} /var/tmp/INDEX_BACKUP

Also note, that GNU find does not support ACLs or Extended Attributes, so you definitely do not want to use GNU find on Solaris.

edited May 23 '18 at 13:24

answered May 14 '18 at 12:38

Sasha Golikov

251
1
7

It will not work faster that @StephenKitt's `-delete` where the deletion is done internally by `find` and would be a lot faster than invoking a separate `rm` utility in a child process. It's not faster than `-exec rm -f {} +` either which like `xargs` runs as few `rm` invocations as necessary. But it has a few problems like: it breaks with file names containing blanks, newlines, quotes..., If `rm` issues a prompt, it will read the response from the output of `find`. – Stéphane Chazelas May 14 '18 at 12:41
Dear @Stéphane, not all systems have GNU find. For example Solaris 10. – Sasha Golikov May 14 '18 at 12:45
`-exec rm -f {} +` is standard, added to SysV in the mid 80s. In POSIX since 1992. Actually, GNU find was one of the last ones to support it. Solaris definitely supports it. `-delete` is a GNU extension (though also supported by a few other implementations now). – Stéphane Chazelas May 14 '18 at 12:55
Solaris11 supports `-delete` only in its GNU extension (/usr/gnu/bin/find). Solaris10 has not it preinstalled, admin needs install it. – Sasha Golikov May 14 '18 at 13:01
And please note that GNU find does not support ACLs or Extended Attributes, so you definitely do not want to use GNU find on Solaris. – schily May 23 '18 at 12:17

score 0 · Answer 4 · edited Jun 11 '20 at 14:16

Using bash and assuming that there are not thousands of these files:

rm /var/kafka/kafka-logs/**.index
mv /var/kafka/kafka-logs/**.index /var/tmp/INDEX_BACKUP

This would not check whether the names on the destination already exist, so it may overwrite files there (with your example files, you would only end up with a single copy of the 00000000000000000000.index file, for example).

Both of these commands assumes that the globstar shell option has been set in bash using

shopt -s globstar

This enables the ** glob pattern, which will match like * but across / in pathnames.

find + delete only the files that end with .index

4 Answers4