C system function causes error 'sh: Syntax error: "(" unexpected '

Question

I wrote a simple program in C on Linux to delete all the files in a directory except one called svn like this:

  1 #include <stdio.h>
  2 
  3 int main()
  4 {
  5     system("rm !(svn)");
  6     return 0;
  7 }

But when I compile and run it, the terminal says: sh: Syntax error: "(" unexpected

However, when I type and run the command in the terminal directly, all things are done correctly. Any ideas?

Answer 1

The answer is don't use system. Use the Linux system calls to list the files in the directory and remove them using unlink(). Something like:

DIR* dirHandle = opendir(dirName);
struct dirent* dirEntry;
while ((dirEntry = readdir(dirHandle)) != NULL)
{
    if (strcmp(dirEntry->d_name, "svn") != 0)
    {
        unlink(dirEntry->d_name);
    }
}

Warning: all error handling omitted, not compiled and tested, readdir might return . and .. which also need to be not deleted.