Beginner question about files deletion

hilbert has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hello,

I would like to erase all the files in the directory a/b but those with a .zip suffix.

Since:

unlink glob('a/b/*.zip');

does deletes all the files with .zip suffix, I though that:

unlink glob('a/b/!(*.zip)');

could erase all the files but those with .zip suffix.

But it does not work: it deltes no files.

Any suggestion please?

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Re: Beginner question about files deletion by Corion (Patriarch) on Feb 07, 2012 at 11:24 UTC
Maybe you want to look into how glob works? It does not work on make-believe. Personally, I recommend using `bsd_glob()` from File::Glob instead as it has much, much saner globbing rules. Also see glob (7) for a brief description of (some) globbing patterns.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Beginner question about files deletion by JavaFan (Canon) on Feb 07, 2012 at 12:40 UTC
Sometimes, the easy solution is to not use perl. `$ find a/b -maxdepth 1 '!' -name '.zip' -type f -exec rm '{}' ';'` [download] Or, from Perl: unlink `find a/b -maxdepth 1 '!' -name '.zip' -type f`; [download] If you're silly enough to put newlines in your filenames, use unlink split /\x00/, `find a/b -maxdepth 1 '!' -name '*.zip' -type f - +print0`; [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Beginner question about files deletion by choroba (Cardinal) on Feb 07, 2012 at 11:45 UTC
What about filtering the files with grep? `unlink grep ! /\.zip$/, glob 'a/b/*';` [download] (Untested.)	[reply] [d/l]