recursive delete by wildcard in unix
 

drwxr-xr-x 164 sample sample 4096 Apr 1 02:47 bigmouthfuls.com
-rw-r--r-- 1 sample sample 25609 Apr 1 05:01 bigmouthfuls.com.html
-rw-r--r-- 1 sample sample 7290 Apr 1 02:27 bigmouthfuls.com.txt
bash-2.05a$ rm *.html$a=474 -r -i bigmouthfuls.com
rm: cannot remove `*.html=474': No such file or directory
rm: descend into directory `bigmouthfuls.com'? y
rm: descend into directory `bigmouthfuls.com/001'? y
rm: remove `bigmouthfuls.com/001/index.html'? n
rm: remove `bigmouthfuls.com/001/logo.jpg'? n
rm: remove `bigmouthfuls.com/001/bmfkirsty-2.wmv'? n
rm: remove `bigmouthfuls.com/001/2.jpg'?
bash-2.05a$ rm "*.html$a=474" -r -i bigmouthfuls.com
rm: cannot remove `*.html=474': No such file or directory
rm: descend into directory `bigmouthfuls.com'?

oki... now I want to remove all the files with .html$a=474 from a directory and it's subdirectories...

i tried rm *.html$a=474 -r -i bigmouthfuls.com and rm "*.html$a=474" -r -i bigmouthfuls.com but it isn't working...

anyone?

escape the $ with a \

thanks for the suggestion! the \ kept the file name intact, but it's still trying to delete all the files instead of the ones i want... even when i just put *a=474...

bash-2.05a$ rm "*.html\$a=474" -r -i bigmouthfuls.com
rm: cannot remove `*.html$a=474': No such file or directory
rm: descend into directory `bigmouthfuls.com'? y
rm: descend into directory `bigmouthfuls.com/001'? y
rm: remove `bigmouthfuls.com/001/index.html'? n
rm: remove `bigmouthfuls.com/001/logo.jpg'? n
rm: remove `bigmouthfuls.com/001/bmfkirsty-2.wmv'? n
rm: remove `bigmouthfuls.com/001/2.jpg'?
bash-2.05a$ rm "*a=474" -r -i bigmouthfuls.com
rm: cannot remove `*a=474': No such file or directory
rm: descend into directory `bigmouthfuls.com'? y
rm: descend into directory `bigmouthfuls.com/001'? y
rm: remove `bigmouthfuls.com/001/index.html'? n
rm: remove `bigmouthfuls.com/001/logo.jpg'? n
rm: remove `bigmouthfuls.com/001/bmfkirsty-2.wmv'? n
rm: remove `bigmouthfuls.com/001/2.jpg'?
bash-2.05a$

find bigmouthfuls.com -name "*html*a=474" -exec rm -i {} ";"

should work. try it with ls instead of rm to check the results first

rm -rf */*html\$=474*

should work

THANK YOU!!! :thumbsup :) :)

i'll try that on my next batch of files... i'm leeching now... ;)