I need to delete everything in directory d1, except the file d1/d2/f1.txt. How can I do that in bash?

CodePudding user response：

This works. It will delete everything, but the directories in path of f1.txt and of course the file itself.

find d1/ ! -iregex '\(d1/\|d1/d2\|d1/d2/f1.txt\)' -delete

However, I would strongly suggest against using -delete as it is permanent and mistyping a character could be disastorous...

You should try something like this instead, putting files and directories in trash folder first just in case you delete a file you don't want to delete you can recover it.

mkdir -p ~/.Trash
find d1/ ! -iregex '\(d1/\|d1/d2\|d1/d2/f1.txt\)' -exec mv {} ~/.Trash \;

CodePudding user response：

Find the contents to delete except for (!) specific file:

find d1/ -type f ! -name 'd1/d2/f1.txt' -delete

CodePudding user response：

find d1 -depth ! -path d1/d2/f1.txt -exec echo rm -d {}  

Remove echo if the output looks right.