Question

How do you delete all files not beginning with a dot by using wild-cards, instead of using grep and such commands.
I am a newbie in Unix and want to understand the basics.
Thanks for your help in advance.

Answer 1

In this case, .’s are not included – so you can just run

rm *

To verify you are about to delete the files rather than to act rashly – it may good idea to:

echo *

The reason for this – is that files that begin with a dot are considered to be ‘hidden’. So they are immune to standard * operations. (To actually delete them – you need to specify in the command)