Recursively delete all flac's in subdirectory, but leave the remaing alone

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Level 2

224 points

Recursively delete all flac's in subdirectory, but leave the remaing alone

Hi,

Originally, I ripped my music with FLAC and used folder.jpg at various levels of the folder hierarchy. Now, after converting the FLACs to ALACs and embedding the artwork, I want to get rid of these old FLACs, but keep the folder hierarchy with the associated folder.jpgs inside (I have a lot of Artists .jpgs that I might want to use someday.

The high level folder is called "Old Music", and this is where I want the FLACs removed. I don't want to touch any other sibling folders for this command.

What Terminal command can I run to accomplish this task? I have a copy of my real ALAC files, but not these old FLACs. They're taking up too much room, so I need to delete them.

Thanks.

24" iMac 3.06 GHz Core 2 Duo/1 TB/8 GB; MBP 17" Core 2 Duo/Santa Rosa, Mac OS X (10.6.5), Parallels v6 with Win7 x64; iPod Touch 2G; iPhone 3GS (4.2.1); iPhone 4 (4.2.1)

Posted on Dec 14, 2010 6:45 AM

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Answer 1

Kappy

Level 10

362,007 points

Dec 15, 2010 10:43 AM in response to ScuseMe

Are you able to delete an individual file from the NAS through the Finder?

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Answer 2

ScuseMe Author

Level 2

224 points

Dec 15, 2010 5:59 PM in response to Kappy

Yes Kappy:


cd "/volumes/media/old music";ls
.
.
.
Yo-Yo Ma
ZZ Top
imac:old music johndoe$ cd "zz top"
imac:zz top johndoe$ ls
The Best of ZZ Top folder.jpg
imac:zz top johndoe$ cd "the best of zz top"
imac:the best of zz top johndoe$ ls
01-Tush.flac 05-Just Got Paid.flac 09-Beer Drinkers and **** Raisers.flac
02-Waitin' For the Bus.flac 06-La Grange.flac 10-Heard It On the X.flac
03-Jesus Just Left Chicago.flac 07-Blue Jean Blues.flac folder.jpg
04-Francine.flac 08-Backdoor Love Affair.flac
imac:the best of zz top johndoe$ rm -rf *.flac
imac:the best of zz top johndoe$ ls
folder.jpg
imac:the best of zz top johndoe$

That seems to work fine.

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Answer 3

ScuseMe Author

Level 2

224 points

Dec 15, 2010 6:03 PM in response to ScuseMe

Maybe the -ri that I substituted for -rf did something to the rm. But from the man page, it should work.

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Answer 4

Kappy

Level 10

362,007 points

Dec 15, 2010 6:50 PM in response to ScuseMe

I see that the directory is listed, but the ls command doesn't delete anything. Once you cd to that directory can you do a single item delete, for example:

rm -rf Tush.flac

If these items are by any chance considered directories then you may want to try:

rmdir Tush.flac

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Answer 5

ScuseMe Author

Level 2

224 points

Dec 15, 2010 7:08 PM in response to Kappy

I did the cd ....;ls just to show you what's under "old music" in one fell swoop. I know the ls just lists the contents of a dir.

They're not directories, since the rm -rf *.flac removed them all from the ZZ Top directory (except the folder.jpg like I wanted). Now I have to figure out how to get rm to work at a high level.

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Answer 6

Kappy

Level 10

362,007 points

Dec 15, 2010 7:33 PM in response to ScuseMe

Check this out.

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Answer 7

ScuseMe Author

Level 2

224 points

Dec 16, 2010 4:41 AM in response to Kappy

Kappy,

That command:


imac:old music johndoe$ find "/volumes/media/old music" -type f -name "*.flac" -exec rm -f {} ;

seems to be working (I'm verifying it from Finder). I guess the rm command by itself couldn't traverse the directory path, deleting along the way. Only using find to locate the files; then passing them to rm did the trick. Thanks for the tip.

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