mjhjmtu

I am trying to clear multiple directories stored in an array. Here's a simplified example (I have more directories).

#!/bin/bash 

$IMAGES_DIR="/Users/michael/scripts/imagefiles"
$BACKUP_DIR="/Users/michael/scripts/imagebackups"

...

array=( $IMAGES_DIR $BACKUP_DIR )
for i in $array[@]
do
 if [ "$(ls -A $i)" ]; then # check that directory has files in it
 rm "$i/"* # remove them 
 fi
done

I get errors for each directory, e.g.:

rm: /Users/michael/scripts/imagefiles/*: No such file or directory

How about accomplishing it all in a single command?

You can capture the file existence check, globbing and removal with one find call. In the case of GNU's version of find we'd have this:

for f in "$array[@]"; do
 find "$f" -type f -delete
done

If you don't have GNU find use this invocation:

find "$f" -type f -exec rm -f +

(If instead of clearing files from the entire directory hierarchy you only want to clear files that are immediate children then add -maxdepth 1 before -type f.)

But wait, there's more....

As John1024 wisely notes you can forgo the loop altogether by passing the array as the first parameter to find:

 find "$array[@]" -type f -delete

That's because: 1) find will accept multiple directories to be searched and processed in one execution 2) the shell will split the array such that each element (directory) becomes an individual positional parameter to find.

Change your code to this:

#!/bin/bash 

IMAGES_DIR="/Users/michael/scripts/imagefiles"
BACKUP_DIR="/Users/michael/scripts/imagebackups"

array=( $IMAGES_DIR $BACKUP_DIR )
for i in "$array[@]"
do
 if [ "$(ls -A "$i")" ]; then 
 rm "$i:?"/* 
 fi
done

Errors:

1. Placing $ on the left hand side of variable assignments


2. Not quoting the $i in if [ "$(ls -A $i)" ];then
   


3. Use "$var:?" to ensure this, rm "$i/"* never expands to /*
   

Please find the below awk oneliner to achieve the same , As tested it worked fine

i="/root/";ls -ltr /root/| grep "^-rw" | awk -v i="$i" 'print "rm -rvf" " " i$9' | sh 

for example i have assigned variable i = path /root/ you can change as per your requirement

i="/root/" ===> path