How to recursivly delete all JPG files, but keep the ones containing "sample"

Question

How can I find and delete all the .jpg files in a directory tree with the exception of the ones containing "sample" in their filename?

For example :

a.zip          ->  keep it  
b.jpg          ->  delete it  
a-sample.jpg   ->  keep it  
b-Sample.jpg   ->  keep it  

Answer 1

To delete all files ending in .jpg (case-insensitive) except for files with sample in the file name (case-insensitive:

find . ! -iname '*sample*'  -iname '*.jpg' -delete

This recurses through all directories in the tree starting at the current directory.

How it works:

• .

  This specifies that we start with the current directory.

• ! -iname '*sample*'

  This instructs find to ignore all files with sample in their name. The i in -iname makes this test case-Insensitive.

• -iname '*.jpg'

  This condition, which is and'd with the previous one, looks for files ending in .jpg.

• -delete

  This instructs find to delete all such files.

Before running the above command, you might want to test it. Run:

find . ! -iname '*sample*'  -iname '*.jpg'

This will print out the files of interest. If this list is good, then run the command again with -delete appended.

Answer 2

In bash, you can use

shopt -s extglob

to enable negative matching:

rm !(*[Ss]ample*).jpg

To match subfolders too, turn on

shopt -s globstar

and use the double star:

rm **/!(*[Ss]ample*).jpg