rmhere - Delete files in current directory
This document describes version 0.06 of rmhere (from Perl distribution App-rmhere), released on 2015-09-03.
In a directory with many files which you want to delete:
% rmhere -f
To show progress:
% rmhere -fp
To show progress and count the number of files first (so it'll show percentage up to 100% and estimated completion time):
% rmhere -fP
Delete recursively, set location:
% rmhere -Rf --here /tmp/files
Don't actually delete files, only show:
% rmhere -f --dry-run
Only delete files matching a wildcard:
% rmhere --nodir -R --match '*.txt'
NOTE: Early release, some options not yet implemented: --dir, --file, --match, --recursive.
When deleting many files in a directory (thousands, millions), the venerable rm Unix command is rather cumbersome to use. If you issue rm * the shell will usually complain with "Argument list too long" because it expands the wildcard first. You can also use find ./ -type f -maxdepth 1 -delete. This rmhere command is equivalent to that, with some extra options and features:
rm *
find ./ -type f -maxdepth 1 -delete
Progress report
Dry-run
Just set DRY_RUN=1 or --dry-run to enter dry-run (simulation) mode.
--dry-run
Recursive option
Using -R.
-R
For safety, the default behavior is -i. That means, if rmhere is executed without argument, it will ask before deleting each file.
-i
* marks required options.
*
Set path to configuration file.
Can be specified multiple times.
Set configuration profile to use.
Do not use any configuration file.
Do not read environment for default options.
Choose output format, e.g. json, text.
Default value:
undef
Set output format to json.
When outputing as JSON, strip result envelope.
0
By default, when outputing as JSON, the full enveloped result is returned, e.g.:
[200,"OK",[1,2,3],{"func.extra"=>4}]
The reason is so you can get the status (1st element), status message (2nd element) as well as result metadata/extra result (4th element) instead of just the result (3rd element). However, sometimes you want just the result, e.g. when you want to pipe the result for more post-processing. In this case you can use `--naked-res` so you just get:
[1,2,3]
Count files first before start deleting.
With this opotion, the program will do an `opendir` and list the directory first. This can take several minutes if the directory is large, so the program will not start deleting after several minutes. But with this option, we know how many files we want to delete, so the progress report will know when to reach 100%.
Equivalent to --nointeractive.
See --no-interactive.
--no-interactive
Display help message and exit.
Override current directory.
Show progress report.
Display program's version and exit.
Equivalent to --progress --estimate.
See --progress.
--progress
My system: customer SATA HDD 7200rpm, Debian/Linux, ext3fs, Core i5-2400 3.1GHz. rmhere performs worse than rm for small to medium number of files (1-200k files), but as the number of files approaches 1+ million, there are practically no difference in performance as the bottleneck lies in the filesystem. Some numbers:
Creating 200k files using touch `seq 1 200000`: 5s.
touch `seq 1 200000`
Deleting 200k files using rm: 6s.
rm
Deleting 200k files using rmhere -fP: 1m10s.
rmhere -fP
Creating 1 million files using touch `seq 1 200000`;touch `seq 200001 400000`;touch `seq 400001 600000`; touch `seq 600001 800000`; touch `seq 800001 1000000`: 32s.
touch `seq 1 200000`;touch `seq 200001 400000`;touch `seq 400001 600000`; touch `seq 600001 800000`; touch `seq 800001 1000000`
Deleting 1 million files using rm fails ("Argument list too long").
Deleting 1 million files using find -type f | xargs -n 50000 rm: about 30m.
find -type f | xargs -n 50000 rm
Deleting 1 million files using rmhere -fP: about 30m.
rm, find
This script has shell tab completion capability with support for several shells.
To activate bash completion for this script, put:
complete -C rmhere rmhere
in your bash startup (e.g. ~/.bashrc). Your next shell session will then recognize tab completion for the command. Or, you can also directly execute the line above in your shell to activate immediately.
~/.bashrc
It is recommended, however, that you install shcompgen which allows you to activate completion scripts for several kinds of scripts on multiple shells. Some CPAN distributions (those that are built with Dist::Zilla::Plugin::GenShellCompletion) will even automatically enable shell completion for their included scripts (using shcompgen) at installation time, so you can immadiately have tab completion.
shcompgen
To activate tcsh completion for this script, put:
complete rmhere 'p/*/`rmhere`/'
in your tcsh startup (e.g. ~/.tcshrc). Your next shell session will then recognize tab completion for the command. Or, you can also directly execute the line above in your shell to activate immediately.
~/.tcshrc
It is also recommended to install shcompgen (see above).
For fish and zsh, install shcompgen as described above.
Specify additional command-line options
This script can read configuration file, which by default is searched at ~/.config/rmhere.conf, ~/rmhere.conf or /etc/rmhere.conf (can be changed by specifying --config-path). All found files will be read and merged.
~/.config/rmhere.conf
~/rmhere.conf
/etc/rmhere.conf
--config-path
To disable searching for configuration files, pass --no-config.
--no-config
Configuration file is in the format of IOD, which is basically INI with some extra features.
You can put multiple profiles in a single file by using section names like [profile=SOMENAME]. Those sections will only be read if you specify the matching --config-profile SOMENAME.
[profile=SOMENAME]
--config-profile SOMENAME
List of available configuration parameters:
estimate (see --estimate) format (see --format) here (see --here) interactive (see --no-interactive) naked_res (see --naked-res) progress (see --progress)
Please visit the project's homepage at https://metacpan.org/release/App-rmhere.
Source repository is at https://github.com/perlancar/perl-App-rmhere.
Please report any bugs or feature requests on the bugtracker website https://rt.cpan.org/Public/Dist/Display.html?Name=App-rmhere
When submitting a bug or request, please include a test-file or a patch to an existing test-file that illustrates the bug or desired feature.
perlancar <perlancar@cpan.org>
This software is copyright (c) 2015 by perlancar@cpan.org.
This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.
To install App::rmhere, copy and paste the appropriate command in to your terminal.
cpanm
cpanm App::rmhere
CPAN shell
perl -MCPAN -e shell install App::rmhere
For more information on module installation, please visit the detailed CPAN module installation guide.