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Mattia Mancina
Mattia Mancina

Reputation: 119

bash delete script don't work

i have a bash script that should all files that are not .avi, .mp4 and .mkv.

This is what i tried:

#!/bin/bash
FILES=$(find /home/mattia/test/ -type f -name '*.*')

for f in $FILES
do
        ext=${f#*.}
        echo $ext
        if [[ "$ext" != "mp4" || "$ext" != "mkv" || "$ext" != "avi" ]]; then
                rm -f $f
                echo deleted
        fi
done

But this script deletes all files.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 87

Answers (2)

Ljm Dullaart
Ljm Dullaart

Reputation: 4969

It is logical that 

[[ "$ext" != "mp4" || "$ext" != "mkv" || "$ext" != "avi" ]]

is always true. For example: if the file name is movie.avi, "$ext" != "mp4" will be true and therefore the complete if will always be true.

As always, there are many ways to solve this. Janos did it in find; an alternative would be:

find /find /home/mattia/test/ -type f -name '*.*'home/mattia/test/ -type f -name '*.*' |
  egrep -v '.mp4$|.mkv$|.avi$' |
  xargs rm

Or, in your loop:

#!/bin/bash

FILES=$(find /home/mattia/test/ -type f -name '*.*')

for f in $FILES
do
    ext=${f#*.}
    echo $ext
    case "$ext" in        
    (mp4) echo "Keeping $f"
          ;;
    (mkv) echo "Not deleting $f"
          ;;
    (avi) echo "Holding on to $f"
          ;;
    (*)   rm -f "$f"
          echo "deleted $f"
          ;;
    esac
done

(which should work as long as your file names don't have spaces)

Or sorting-out the if-condition

[[ ! ( "$ext" = "mp4" || "$ext" = "mkv" || "$ext" = "avi" ) ]]

Upvotes: 0

janos
janos

Reputation: 124646

Aside from changing || to &&, the script is fragile, for example it won't work if any of the files contains spaces. In general it's not safe to store the output of find in a variable for looping, so this practice should be avoided.

In any case, you don't need a loop, find can do this all by itself, and safer:

find /home/mattia/test/ -type f ! \( -name '*.mp4' -o -name '*.mkv' -o -name '*.avi' \) -print -delete

Note that instead of !, you could use the more intuitive -not, but keep in mind that it is not POSIX compliant.

Upvotes: 2

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