Recursively iterating through subdirectories and removing certain file

Question

I have a music archive with lots of folders and sub-folders (Cover Art etc.) so instead of manually removing hundreds of Folder.jpg, Desktop.ini and Thumb.db files, I decided to do a simple bash script but things got really messy.

I did a simple test by creating dummy folders like this: /home/dummy/sub1 - sub1sub1 sub1sub1sub1 sub1sub1sub2 sub2 - sub2sub1 sub2sub2 sub2sub2sub1

and copied some random .jpg, .mp3, .ini files across these folders. My bash script looks currently like this:

function delete_jpg_ini_db {
    if [[ $f == *.jpg ]]; then
    echo ".jpg file, removing $f"
    gvfs-trash  $f

    elif [[ $f == *.ini ]]; then
    echo ".ini file, removing $f"
    gvfs-trash -f $f

    elif [[ $f == *.db ]]; then
    echo ".db file, removing $f"
    gvfs-trash -f $f

    else echo "not any .jpg, .ini or .db file, skipping $f"
    fi 
}

function iterate_dir {
for d in *; do
    if [ -d $d ]; then
    echo "entering sub-directory: $d" && cd $d
    pwd
    for f in *; do
       if [ -f $f ]; then #check if .jpg, .ini or .db, if so delete
        delete_jpg_ini_db

       elif [ -d $f ]; then #enter sub-dir and iterate again
           if [ "$(ls -A $f)" ]; then
            iterate_dir
            else 
            echo "sub-directory $f is empty!"
             fi
       fi
    done    
    fi  
done
}
pwd
iterate_dir

When I run it, it successfully iterates through sub1, sub1sub1 and sub1sub1sub1, but it halts there instead of going back to home and searching sub2 next.

I am new in Bash scripting, all help is appreciated.. Thanks.

Ondrej · Answer 1 · 2015-03-17T12:21:16.597

2

And in one command you can run:

find /home/dummy/sub1 -name "*.jpg" -o -name "*.ini" -o -name "*.db" -delete

And if you want to see which files would be deleted, replace -delete with -print (just filenames) or with -ls (like ls -l output).

edited Mar 17 '15 at 12:21

answered Mar 16 '15 at 16:36

Ondrej

101
5

@arco444: missing -name option added - thanks for pointing this out! – Ondrej Mar 17 '15 at 10:58

cafebabe1991 · Answer 2 · 2015-03-18T05:20:24.460

here is the changed code....

    function delete_jpg_ini_db {
    if [[ $f == *.jpg ]]; then
    echo ".jpg file, removing $f"
    gvfs-trash  $f

    elif [[ $f == *.ini ]]; then
    echo ".ini file, removing $f"
    gvfs-trash  -f $f

    elif [[ $f == *.db ]]; then
    echo ".db file, removing $f"
    gvfs-trash  -f $f
    else echo "not any .jpg, .ini or .db file, skipping $f"
    fi 
}

function iterate_dir {
for d in *; do
    if [ -d "$d" ]; then
    echo "entering sub-directory: $d" && cd $d
    pwd
    for f in *; do
       if [ -f "$f" ]; then #check if .jpg, .ini or .db, if so delete
         delete_jpg_ini_db

       elif [ -d $f ]; then #enter sub-dir and iterate again
           if [ "$(ls -A $f)" ]; then
             iterate_dir
            else 
            echo "sub-directory $f is empty!"
             fi
       fi

    done
    cd ..   
    fi  
done
}
pwd
iterate_dir

Mistakes

You did have support for file name with space in them
You did not navigate back after your inner for loop..

Try it...

Recursively iterating through subdirectories and removing certain file

2 Answers2