How to remove/delete executable files (aka files without extension) only

Question

I have a directory src/ that contain many .cc files and its binary. For example:

src/
  |_ foo.cc
  |_ bar.cc
  |_ qux.cc
  |_ thehead.hh
  |_ foo  (executable/binary)
  |_ bar  (executable/binary)
  |_ qux  (executable/binary)
  |_ makefile

In reality there are many .cc and executable files.

I need to remove those binaries in a global way without having to list all the files. Is there a fast and compact way to do it?

I tried:

$ rm *

but it removes all the files include .cc and .hh files.

I am aware of this command:

$ rm foo bar qux ....

but then we still have to list all the files one by one.

Answer 1

Here you go:

ls | grep -v "\." | xargs rm

The grep -v says "only allow filenames that don't contain a dot", and the xargs rm says "then pass the list of filenames to rm".

Answer 2

Use the find. What you want is this:

find . -executable -exec rm '{}' \;

Removing everything without an extension can also be done:

find . -not -iname "*.*" -exec rm '{}' \;

The former option does not delete the Makefile, and is thus to be preferred. I think kcwu's answer shows a nice way to improve the above using the -delete option :

find . -executable -delete
find . -not -iname "*.*" -delete

---

Edit: I use GNU findutils find, version 4.4.0, under Ubuntu 8.10. I was not aware the -executable switch is so uncommon.

Answer 3

you can run

find . -perm +100 -type f -delete

Answer 4

Instead of passing -exec rm '{}' \; to find one can use -delete arg.

Answer 5

Use find to remove all files (not folders) that do not contain a dot characeter:

find . \! -name "*.*" -type f -exec rm {} \;

Answer 6

find . -perm /ugo+x -delete

Corrected version of Stephan202's first command.

EDIT: Also try:

find . -perm /111 -delete

which uses the octal equivalent

Answer 7

i suggest using first

find . -not -name "*.*" -exec ls -l {} \;

to see the name of files that are matched.

and then, change the ls -l to rm

find . -not -name "*.*" -exec rm {} \;

also, you can use a confirm prompt to make it more safe:

find . -not -name "*.*" -exec rm -i {} \;

Answer 8

I would rather go for a clean target in the Makefile. Most probably it already contains a list of these binaries, so adding a clean target would not require much effort.