How do I find .zip files and then delete them

[mashedbear]

Hi I want to use the shell to find .zip files in my music directory and all sub directories and then delete only these files.

The following will find the files I want to delete

find /home/me/Music/ -name *.zip -ls

What is the next step to delete *only* these files.

Would it be a good idea to move them to another directory before doing the final rm - how would I do this?

Thanks

[rubylaser]

Just pipe it to xargs.

find /home/me/Music/ -name "*.zip" | xargs rm

[~Plue]

execute rm -r along with the command

find /home/me/Music/ -name *.zip -exec rm -r {} \;

[danjahner]

If you want to be extra cautious, you could do :

find /home/me/Music/ -name *.zip -print0 | xargs -0 -I{} mv {} /home/me/Music/zip-files

This will move them to a folder that you can double-check before deleting.

[rubylaser]

find /home/me/Music/ -name *.zip -exec rm -r {} \;

Why would you use exec over xargs? xargs is more efficient in that when you use "-exec" with 'find', it starts a new process for each file that is found. This can be very expensive for a large number of files.

And, no need to pass the recursive flag to rm, as find is recursive by default.

[~Plue]

Why would you use exec over xargs? xargs is more efficient in that when you use "-exec" with 'find', it starts a new process for each file that is found. This can be very expensive for a large number of files.

And, no need to pass the recursive flag to rm, as find is recursive by default.

i thought the difference would be minimal. thanx for letting me know that.

[mashedbear]

Thanks All