CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ansible
user301693
user301693

Reputation: 2507

remove all files containing a certain name within a directory

I have the following directory and it has the following files:

/tmp/test/file1.txt
/tmp/test/file1.txt.backup
/tmp/test/mywords.csv

How do I use the file module to just remove file1* files?

Upvotes: 17

Views: 35132

Answers (4)

MillerGeek
MillerGeek

Reputation: 3137

edit: Ansible 2.0 has been released now, so the previous answer should work, and you can also now loop over fileglobs. Note this only works if you are running Ansible locally:

- file:
    path: "{{item}}"
    state: absent
  with_fileglob:
    - /tmp/test/file*

original answer:

I can't find a way to do this currently without dropping to the shell, however if you can drop to the shell to gather a list of files that match the pattern and save that as a variable, then you can loop over the file module with with_items

Ansible 2.0 will include a "find" module that would get the list for you: http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/find_module.html

Here's a couple of tasks that should do it in ansible 2.0, but I don't have it installed so I haven't tested it and may be accessing the results of the find module incorrectly.

- find:
    paths: "/tmp/test"
    patterns: "file*"
  register: result

- file:
    path: "{{item.path}}" #correction code
    state: absent
  with_items: " {{ result.files }}"

Upvotes: 30

Diego Roberto Dos Santos
Diego Roberto Dos Santos

Reputation: 459

- hosts: srv-lnx
  gather_facts: no

  tasks:
    - shell: "find /var/tmp/collect -maxdepth 1 -type f | awk -F/ '{print $NF}'"
      register: result

    - debug: var=result

    - fetch: src=/var/tmp/collect/{{ item }} dest=/appl/collect/data flat=yes
      with_items: result.stdout_lines

Upvotes: 0

Maoz Zadok
Maoz Zadok

Reputation: 5900

you can use the find + file module as shown above, but on ansible < 2.0 I got this error:

ERROR: find is not a legal parameter in an Ansible task or handler

the following command will do (you may replace the -regex with -name "files1*"):

- name: delete files
  shell: 'find /tmp/test/ -maxdepth 1 -type f -regex "/tmp/test/file1.*" -exec rm -rf {} \;'

Upvotes: 1

bravosierra99
bravosierra99

Reputation: 1371

So I'm not in front of a linux terminal but you can use this if you are trying to ensure you only remove things that are files. Should work but you might need to tweak it.

find . -name files1* -type f -exec basename {} \; | xargs rm

Upvotes: 0

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