Question

I have a mp3 Player. I have connected it to my PC which has Ubuntu as an OS.
I want to delete all the files that are not .mp3.

I know that for deleting them the command is rm *.mp3, but what’s the combination for negating this?
I’ve tried: rm ^.mp3, ^mp3 ^[mp3], but they didn’t work! Any suggestion?

Answer 1

Assuming you are using bash and extglob is set, you should be able to:

rm !(*.mp3)

I would try a test with ls before blindly running that command:

ls !(*.mp3)

To check the value of extglob:

shopt extglob

And to turn it on, if necessary:

shopt -s extglob