Delete all folder not containing filename matching glob/regex

Question

I want to do the following. I have depth 2 file hierarchy like this:

A
| B
| | g
| | h50000
| C

Where A, B, C are folders. I want to delete all folders without files matching specific patters, (in my case 50000 is pattern, glob style) on depth level 2. (In this example folder C should only be deleted, alongside its content, while A remains)

In my application I'm fine if I delete all folders where neither children contains filename matching a pattern. (It would make it easier to not delete A without specifying on which depth I'm deleting).

How would I be able to do it in bash on Linux machine?

Answer 1

With find you could exclude a pattern:

find \! -name '*50000*' -delete

Escaping ! is necessary due to its usage in shells.

Directories with contents will not be deleted.

WARNING: since from your question it is a bit unclear to me - this WILL delete other files in folders that have a 50000 pattern, e.g. A/B/g will be removed and only files (and dirs) with name 50000 (including their parent direcories) be kept!

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For deleting all directories that have no 50000 file in them and keep directories with such files along with the other contents of this directory, I'd suggest a two-step method:

1. list all files and directories and safe into text file

   find . -depth -mindepth 1 > all
   

2. list directories that need to be kept (find file and print dir only)

   find . -depth -name '*50000*' printf '%h\n' > keep
   

3. pick the deletable files and directories with an inverted grep

   grep -vf keep all > deletable
   

4. use this list for deletion (just a sample)

   while read line 
   do
   
      find . -wholename "$line" -delete
   
   done < deletable
   

Note that point 4 is slow due to the nature of being a line-per-line shell script. Not the nicest, but will do the job.

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Alternatively (and simpler): If you have root access intermedially change the i-attribute, preventing changes, including deletion, delete everything (as deletion is not allowed for i-flagged files and dirs), and remove the i flag in the end.

#%h goes for parent directories of our hits
find -name '*5000*' -printf '%h\0' | xargs -0 chattr -R +i '{}'
#be careful now ....
rm -r *
chattr -i -R *