How Do I Find And Delete Files Of A Certain Type?

If you're careful, and I don't take any responsibility for misuse of this command, you can do this from a Windows command prompt with the following command:

del /s *.pita

This will delete all *.pita files from the current directory and all subdirectories.

Jim

/* if you think the problem is bad now, wait until I fix it! */

This link gives more details on how to recursively delete files in Windows: [techie-buzz.com]

Shankar Ganesh

I use Everything for these type of things. Very fast and responsive.

twii

also sorting by date will help lots i bet.

mfusion

I just wanted to add that on windows XP, when installing Office 2007 it puts windows search on your computer and replaces the default windows XP search. I discovered the Search My Files program by nirsoft from Lifehacker that has a similar interface to the original Windows XP search.

Trevor Mitchell

I usually prefer to quote whatever find finds:

find . -iname *.PITA -exec rm "{}" \;

in case the file name has some otherwise escapey characters in it.

The super-duper free file manager FreeCommander can handle this with aplomb and flexibility.

You can search for multiple file types in one shot (e.g., *.wav;*.mp?;*.wma) and limit your searches to specific directory nodes (e.g., c:\music;c:\temp\my mp3s).

Shift-select the first and last files in the result list to highlight all the files, and delete them via the context menu.

cipheroid

Be careful with this stuff - I was writing an app to iterate through folders and index the files, and I made a slight typing error. (dFile, not aFile. Damn my function naming!), and wiped my entire hard drive. Luckily it was in a VM, so I could reinstall, but still.

My whole HD.

How about DOS? Something like FOR %%F IN ('dir /b /s *.PITA') DO DEL %%F

simonsen77

Another caveats about "find". If you have any *.PITA files in your current working directory, the above command may fail because your shell does filename globbing (i.e. it expands the asterisk) for you.

$ find .
.
./1.jpg
./2.jpg
./example
./example/infolder1.jpg
./example/infolder2.jpg

$ find . -iname *.jpg
find: paths must precede expression: 2.jpg
Usage: find [-H] [-L] [-P] [-Olevel] [-D help|tree|search|stat|rates|opt|exec] [path...] [expression]

This essentially gets expanded to the following invalid command:
$ find . -iname 1.jpg 2.jpg

When using asterisks in the name and iname flags, its a good idea to use quotes.

$ find . -iname "*.jpg"
./1.jpg
./2.jpg
./example/infolder1.jpg
./example/infolder2.jpg

pseutro

You can further refine Everything, in case it is not ALL files of a type that you want to delete (move, copy, ...)
after typing in .pita to get all the .pita files, you can click on the Path header or other column to sort the files, so the files you want may be closer together. To get only those files that are in the My Music directories of every user on the computer (yourself and others), you can type
.pita my music\
Very simple. Everything uses Windows Explorer so you can right-click any or some or all the files there and do any actions for which you ahve a context menu as well.

You can find Everything at [voidtools.com]

Cornflower

You can just do -delete at the end of the find command, instead of the exec rm stuff, makes it a bit simpler. e.g.,

find / -iname "*.pita" -delete

Also that command should work on Mac as well as Linux, saves you firing up Spotlight (which I've never used so can't vouch for it being a better or worse solution; any Macs I come into contact with regularly, like my parents', have too old an OSX version to have Spotlight).

gazb

If you're using windows, open the command box, go to the root (cd \) and enter this command.

del /s /f /q /a:h *.filetype

this will, without expection, delete every single file of the given filetype on your drive. Be carefull, as it will also delete files you might have not thought of before you started this. They're gone, forever. If you want to limit it to a certain map, use the "cd" command to navigate to that map and execute it there.

Vordreller

One quick question: why not just use find´s own -delete flag instead of -exec rm "{}" \; ?

asmus.vierck

If you're using Windows PowerShell:
get-childitem -include *.PITA -recurse | remove-item

You can add a -whatIf switch to remove-item and it will list all files without deleting them, or you could just do this to get a list:
get-childitem -include *.PITA -recurse | select-object Name

SittenSpynne

@twii: Very fast is an understatement. Everything should be renamed Lightning.

jarmod

I would use:

find . -iname \*.PITA -exec rm \"{}\" \;

1. You need to quote the * in case shell globbing matches current files.
2. You need to quote the match in case files have spaces in them (or other characters).

RandomMarius

@Vordreller: I haven't tested this, so apologies if this is not the case. But won't the /a:h part mean it will only delete hidden files of that file type?

Also what you could do as a preview to the delete is
dir *.filetype /C > C:\find_filetype.txt

Although you said across multiple drives, so you would have to run this on the root of each, quick though.

themattyg

Why not use -name instead of -iname since it parses the wild-card (*) correctly? It's also a good idea to use the -print option and to enclose the {} with single quotes.

So instead of:

find ./ -iname *.PITA -exec rm {} \;

It would be:

find ./ -name *.PITA -exec rm '{}' \; -print

@theformatter:

Now I'm hungry

my music is spread across nested folders on multiple drives

Ohh dear god why, I can only imagine the rats nest of a music collection you've got going on.

/all of my music is on my F: (frequency) partition. Strictly categorized. I'm currently in the process of fixing all of my ID3v2 tags as well.

@themattyg: * sorry that was supposed to be /S

themattyg

@jkdufair: Hmmm. The use of *.PITA concerns me. My cmd line attempts to expand that in the current directory.

$ find . -name "*.PITA" -exec rm {} \;

is the cmd I'd use. I don't like case insensitive deletions. From the 'find' man page:
Please note that you should quote patterns as a matter of course, otherwise the shell will expand any wildcard characters in them.

TheFu

heh. sudo rm -r /

no but seriously, i suck at bash, but if you want to delete every .pita file, get linux live-cd, mount yourr hdd (say it's 'disk') crack open termminal,

cd /media/disk

sudo rm -r *.pita

Alfonzo

Also have a look at Windows Search...(4.xx)
You can string together commands making your search very flexible and powerful. (Vista/Win 7)
Example : kind:music artist:arch bitrate:>192kbps
The above example will return all music files with an artist tag containing "arch" and with a bitrate greater than 192kbps.
You can search documents and their contents using the "content:" seach option too, making it very useful for finding documents/ scripts etc quickly. Unlike earlier versions of Windows Search this actually works.

cobuss

@theformatter:

I use the command line in vista for deleting files regularly. Right clicking a few hundred files at the same time and asking vista to delete them is somehow a huge drain on the explorer process and it will surely go into a (Not Responding) fit for some time. Shift-right clicking on a folder will add the "Open command prompt here" option to the context menu and will get you to the folder that you need to be in very quickly. Also using the /F/S/Q will burn right thru those pesky read only files as well as sub-folders!

Mugen4312

@Trevor Mitchell:

Yes, strange that the excellent Nirsoft SearchMyFiles didn't get mentioned in this post, although it was featured on Lifehacker earlier.

[www.nirsoft.net]

thomasmb

Just posted this in a reply, but it's sure good enough to deserve a stand-alone post in its own right:
Small and portable Nirsoft SearchMyFiles.
It's strange that it didn't get mentioned in this post, although it was featured on Lifehacker earlier.

[www.nirsoft.net]

Basically just a front-end for the built-in Windows Search, but a lot more comfortable.

thomasmb

Try DoubleKiller:

[www.bigbangenterprises.de]

It's designed to find duplicate files, but it works very well for this sort of thing too. Just create a file mask for the extension you want to remove, then let DoubleKiller do its thing. When it's done, click the "Check all files" button and then either move them or delete them, depending upon how brave you are.

seiun