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bashpattern-matchingmatchmatchingstring-matching

Delete File, If End Characters Don't Match

I am trying to delete files from /Dir1 that don't exist in /Dir2. The problem is that the first few characters match, but not the last few. For example.

/Dir1
abc_def.png
xyz_xyz.png

/Dir2
abc_ghi.png

So as long as "abc" matches, I don't want to delete the file even though the last few characters are different. The only file I want to delete is xyz.png because it does not exist in /Dir2. How would I go about doing this?

Solution

  • Assuming you want to match part of filename before first underscore (as in your example), you can use this code:

    cd /Dir1

for f in *_*; do
    [[ -f /Dir2/"${f%%_*}"* ]] || echo rm "$f"
done

    Once satisfied, remove echo before rm.