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Is there a quick way of deleting all the .pyc files from a tree of directories?

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3 Answers

up vote 19 down vote accepted

If you've got GNU find then you probably want

find <directory name> -name '*.pyc' -delete

If you need something portable then you're better off with

find <directory name> -name '*.pyc' -exec rm {} \;

If speed is a big deal and you've got GNU find and GNU xargs then

find <directory name> -name '*.pyc' -print0|xargs -0 -p <some number greater than 1> rm

This is unlikely to give you that much of a speed up however, due to the fact that you'll mostly be waiting on I/O.

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perfect ... thanks. It's the xargs I always forget – interstar Sep 7 '09 at 11:25
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Just in case I have files with spaces in the names, I've gotten into the habit of always using -print0 and "xargs -0". – Paul Tomblin Sep 7 '09 at 11:28
You're entirely right, should have thought of that originally., edited to reflect that. – Cian Sep 7 '09 at 11:36
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You can also directly use '-delete' instead of '-print0 | xargs -0 rm'. But that's true that this option isn't present in all version of 'find'. – rolaf Sep 7 '09 at 12:01
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up vote 5 down vote

using the command find:

find /path/to/start -name '*.pyc' -exec rm -f {} \;
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That's too slow. Using xargs is faster, or if your version of find supports it, change the "\;" at the end to a "+". – Dennis Williamson Sep 7 '09 at 12:11
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It may be a little slower--it runs "rm" once for each file instead of batching them--but it's the most portable way to do it. The OP didn't say what kind of unix he was using, and Solaris find still doesn't have the -print0 feature. – Kenster Sep 7 '09 at 13:49
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+1, OP said unix not linux, this is the best portable solution. – theotherreceive Sep 7 '09 at 13:59
I think this solution is the only permitting to remove tons of files, if I am not wrong using xargs can leave into a command line too long error. +1, it is my choice since years too. – AlberT Sep 7 '09 at 15:23
If you are using a makefile to build your project, you might want to add this in to the target "clean". – Tom Newton Sep 7 '09 at 16:01
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up vote 1 down vote

cd to the start of the tree of directories then:

find . -name '*.pyc' |xargs rm -f

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It's not necessary to cd, just put the top directory in the find command (in place of "dot"). – Dennis Williamson Sep 7 '09 at 12:10
This doesn't handle spaces at all. – Cian Sep 7 '09 at 14:07
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