remove files by owner

[Derek Baxter_1]

I could not find this here. Can anyone tell me if there is a way to remove files from a directory by the owner of the file. We accidentally restored files to the wrong folder and there are over 1000 files there.

[Steven E. Protter]

I use a two step process.

ls -1 | grep username > list.txt

Then I read the filelist with the script command

read a

rm $a

SEP

[Michael Tully]

If it is a certain user, I would be tempted to use the find command to do this.

# find . -user >/tmp/list
# sed 's/^/rm /' /tmp/list1
# sh /tmp/list1

This wil remove the files from the current directory with a cerain username and not all files.

Regards
Michael
"When I have trouble spelling, it's called fat finger syndrome"

[Rajeev Shukla · Accepted solution]

or use
find -user -exec rm {}\;

Rajeev

[Steve Lewis]

A two-step process is good idea, to first check that you are going to remove the right files.

Here is another way:

$find /directoryname -user username -type f | more

Check that it lists only the files you want to remove.

$find /directoryname -user username -type f | xargs -t -i rm {}

This prints the rm command it runs for every file it finds, so you have a record of what you deleted.

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

Two steps is good. I do this,

# find /dir -type f -user username -exec mv {} /tmpdir \;

# cd /tmpdir

# ls -la

# rm -r *

[Trond Haugen]

If you are confident that all files in that dir owned by the user sould be removed:
find dir -user username -exec rm {} \;

Regards,
Trond Haugen