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I have a folder with many sub-folders containing small tif files (less than 160kb) which have been merged together in bigger pdf files, together with some big multi-page tif files.
I want to delete all small tif files without deleting the bigger files (tif or pdf) and retaining the directory structure. How do I go about it on Linux using the command-line?
To Do
Posted 2013-09-12T09:57:40.587
Reputation: 1 772
158
find . -name "*.tif" -type 'f' -size -160k -delete
Run the command without -delete first to verify that the correct files are found.
Note the - before 160k. Just 160k means exactly 160 kilobytes. -160k means smaller than 160 kilobytes. +160k means larger than 160 kilobytes.
The -type 'f' forces the command to only act on files and skip directories. this would avoid errors if the path contains folders with names that match the pattern *.tif.
If you want to filter size in bytes (as in 160 bytes instead of 160 kilobytes) then you have to write it like this: 160c. If you just write 160 it will be interpreted as 160*512 bytes. This is a strange requirement by POSIX. Read here for more details: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/259208/purpose-of-find-commands-default-size-unit-512-bytes
lesmana
Posted 2013-09-12T09:57:40.587
Reputation: 14 930
The ubuntu man page seems to mention this. Just below the "TESTS" section:
Numeric arguments can be specified as +n for greater than n, -n for less than n, n for exactly n. – jdg – 2014-09-11T23:55:49.700
1thanks. it did not occur to me that the information might be somewhere else in the manpage. – lesmana – 2014-09-12T08:55:44.693
It is nice this command also works recursively. My use case would be to delete .txt files under 12kB. – Sun – 2014-09-23T04:21:58.183
no need for sudo? – Jean-François Gagnon – 2015-10-06T15:35:35.947
On OSX I needed to add the current folder (dot):
find . -name "*.JPG" -size -100k -delete– TCB13 – 2015-10-30T13:17:09.61711For sizes in bytes specify 50c, not 50b or 50! – Evengard – 2016-01-29T13:43:31.773
and what about if I want to exclude subfolders? – hipoglucido – 2017-11-17T09:46:47.520
very useful, been looking for a one liner :) – Maciej Cygan – 2018-02-14T15:55:23.690
Weirdly,
-2kisn't inclusive of files that are exactly 2 kilobytes - it only matches files that are less than 2 kilobytes. This means you would have to additionally run-size 2kto get those files that are exactly 2 kilobytes. – Hashim – 2020-01-10T22:26:21.603