Linux Mint

1875 readers

10 users here now

Linux Mint is a free Linux-based operating system designed for use on desktop and laptop computers.

Want to see the latest news from the blog? Set the Firefox homepage to:

linuxmint.com/start/

where is a current or past release. Here's an example using release 21.1 'Vera':

https://linuxmint.com/start/vera/

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

erpicht@lemmy.ml

Just started with linux mint, need help with a command (feddit.nl)

submitted 5 hours ago by skaarl@feddit.nl to c/linuxmint@lemmy.ml

11 comments fedilink hide all child comments

As the title says, I just started with linux mint and am falling in love with bash scripts 😍 Actually I'm not sure if it's considered a script, but I want to delete the last 2 files in all subfolders in a folder. So far I've (after great effort) got the terminal to list the files, but I want to delete them. Here is how I get them listed:

for f in *; do ls $f | tail -n 2; done

All their names come satisfyingly up in the terminal. Now what? I tried adding | xargs rm but that didn't delete them. I also tried something with find command but that didn't work either. Some folders have 3 items, so I want to delete #2 and 3. Some folders have 15 items so I want to delete #14 and 15. Folders are arranged by name, so it's always the last 2 that I want to delete.

It's frustrating to be sooooo clooooose, but also very fun. Any help is appreciated!

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] clmbmb@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

yes. that's what I suggested.. the question mark was there to ask you if you tried that :-D I'm at work, pretty busy :-D I hope you read the rm manual.

-r means recursive
-f means force, which will delete the files/directories without interaction

[–] skaarl@feddit.nl 1 points 34 minutes ago

Oh I see, lol. Now I'm getting "Cannot remove: No such file or directory" all the way down! The files are there, I see them, they come up in the terminal, but for some reason xargs rm does not want to delete them. When I put the -f flag, rm doesn't give an error but the files are still there! wtf