23.5 Remove Some, Leave Some

Most people use rm -i (21.11 ) for safety: so they're always asked for confirmation before removing a particular file. Mike Loukides told me about another way he uses rm -i . When he has several files to remove, but the wildcards (1.16 ) would be too painful to type with a plain rm , Mike gives rm -i a bigger list of filenames and answers "n" to filenames he doesn't want deleted. For instance:

% ls


aberrant    abhorred    abnormal     abominate   acerbic
aberrate    abhorrent   abominable   absurd      acrimonious
    ...
% rm -i ab*


rm: remove aberrant (y/n)? y


rm: remove aberrate (y/n)? n


rm: remove abhorred (y/n)? y


rm: remove abhorrent (y/n)? n


    ...