Delete all files except files with the extension pdf in a directory
cd <the directory you want>
find . -type f ! -iname "*.pdf" -delete
- The first command will take you to the directory in which you want to delete your files
- The second command will delete all files except with those ending with
.pdfin filename
For example, if there is a directory called temp in your home folder:
cd ~/temp
then delete files:
find . -type f ! -iname "*.pdf" -delete
This will delete all files except xyz.pdf.
You can combine these two commands to:
find ~/temp -type f ! -iname "*.pdf" -delete
. is the current directory. ! means to take all files except the ones with .pdf at the end. -type f selects only files, not directories. -delete means to delete it.
NOTE: this command will delete all files (except pdf files but including hidden files) in current directory as well as in all sub-directories. ! must come before -name. simply -name will include only .pdf, while -iname will include both .pdf and .PDF
To delete only in current directory and not in sub-directories add -maxdepth 1:
find . -maxdepth 1 -type f ! -iname "*.pdf" -delete
With bash's extended shell globbing, you could remove any files with extensions other than .pdf using
rm -- *.!(pdf)
As noted by @pts, the -- characters indicate the end of any command options, make the command safe in the rare case of files whose names start with a - character.
If you want to delete files without any extension as well as those with extensions other than .pdf, then as pointed out by @DennisWilliamson you could use
rm -- !(*.pdf)
Extended globbing should be enabled by default, but if not you can do so using
shopt -s extglob
Especially if you intend to use this inside a script, it's important to note that if the expression doesn't match anything (i.e. if there are no non-pdf files in the directory), then by default the glob will be passed unexpanded to the rm command, resulting in an error like
rm: cannot remove `*.!(pdf)': No such file or directory
You can modify this default behaviour using the nullglob shell option, however that has its own issue. For a more thorough discussion see NullGlob - Greg's Wiki
Delete to trash:
$ cd <the directory you want>
$ gvfs-trash !(*.pdf)
Or via mv command (but in this way you cannot restore it from Trash since it doesn't record .trashinfo information, so this means you moved your files to a destination where it is as following).
mv !(*.pdf) ~/.local/share/Trash/files