How to delete random n files from directory?

Question

I have a uploads directory and I want to delete random 1000 images from it. How can I do that with command ?

I am able to delete single with rm but it tooks long.. Is there any way to bulk delete on ubuntu ?

Solution

find /uploads -maxdepth 1 -type f -name "*.jpg" -print0 | \
        head -z -n 1000 | xargs -0 rm

The find command finds any files (-type f) named *.jpg (-name "*.jpg") in the directory /uploads and does NOT recurse into subdirectories (-maxdepth 1) (which it usually does). It then prints the filenames with \0 as a separator in-between. This is necessary as the filenames might contain weird characters (like spaces and such).

That output is fed into the head command. It reads the first 1000 "lines" (-n 1000) which are separated by \0 (-z).

Eventually these 1000 "lines" (=filenames) are fed into xargs which as well expects the "lines" to be separated by \0 (-0) and then executes rm with all those 1000 lines as parameters.

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If you just want to preview the result, change the command to

find /uploads -maxdepth 1 -type f -name "*.jpg" -print0 | \
    head -z -n 1000 | xargs -0 echo rm

i.e. replace xargs … rm with xargs … echo rm. Maybe also replace the 1000 with 10 for the preview.

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Disclaimer: I don't know how the files printed by find are sorted, but at least it is not some apparent attribute (like name or age) and looks random. If you really want to pick 1000 random files, you would need to insert a sort -R to sort randomly (again with -z for the \0 delimiter):

find /uploads -maxdepth 1 -type f -name "*.jpg" -print0 | \
    sort -z -R | head -z -n 1000 | xargs -0 rm

Comments

[Hasan Tıngır]

this not an answer, no.. this is beyond the answer. this is kind of masterpiece :) thank you brotha :)

[PerlDuck]

@HasanTıngır You are welcome. Thank you. :-) I appreciate that and am glad I could help you! I enjoyed answering and actually one-line-answers (like just the find ... command) aren't well received on AU. Without an explanation nobody without adequate knowledge can tell whether the answer is right/wrong/malicious or how to adapt it to their own problem.

[Jayhello]

really greate answer with detailed explain.