Delete all folders inside a folder except one with specific name

This will delete all folders inside ./myfolder except that ./myfolder/test2 and all its contents will be preserved:

find ./myfolder -mindepth 1 ! -regex '^./myfolder/test2\(/.*\)?' -delete

How it works

• find starts a find command.

• ./myfolder tells find to start with the directory ./myfolder and its contents.

• -mindepth 1 not to match ./myfolder itself, just the files and directories under it.

• ! -regex '^./myfolder/test2\(/.*\)?' tells find to exclude (!) any file or directory matching the regular expression ^./myfolder/test2\(/.*\)?. ^ matches the start of the path name. The expression (/.*\)? matches either (a) a slash followed by anything or (b) nothing at all.

• -delete tells find to delete the matching (that is, non-excluded) files.

Example

Consider a directory structure that looks like;

$ find ./myfolder
./myfolder
./myfolder/test1
./myfolder/test1/dir1
./myfolder/test1/dir1/test2
./myfolder/test1/dir1/test2/file4
./myfolder/test1/file1
./myfolder/test3
./myfolder/test3/file3
./myfolder/test2
./myfolder/test2/file2
./myfolder/test2/dir2

We can run the find command (without -delete) to see what it matches:

$ find ./myfolder -mindepth 1 ! -regex '^./myfolder/test2\(/.*\)?'
./myfolder/test1
./myfolder/test1/dir1
./myfolder/test1/dir1/test2
./myfolder/test1/dir1/test2/file4
./myfolder/test1/file1
./myfolder/test3
./myfolder/test3/file3

We can verify that this worked by looking at the files which remain:

$ find ./myfolder
./myfolder
./myfolder/test2
./myfolder/test2/file2
./myfolder/test2/dir2

Using bash:

shopt -s extglob
rm -r myfolder/!(test2)/

Example:

$ tree myfolder/
myfolder/
├── test1
│   └── file1
├── test2
│   └── file2
└── test3
    └── file3

$ echo rm -r myfolder/!(test2)
rm -r myfolder/test1 myfolder/test3
$ rm -r myfolder/!(test2)
$ tree myfolder/
myfolder/
└── test2
    └── file2

1 directory, 1 file

tl;dr

find ./myfolder -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d -not -name test2 \
     -exec echo rm -rf '{}' \;

Remove echo if satisfied with the list of files.

---

Using -mindepth 1 will ensure that the top directory is not selected.

$ find ./myfolder -mindepth 1 -type d
./myfolder/test2
./myfolder/test2/one
./myfolder/test2/two
./myfolder/test
./myfolder/test/a1
./myfolder/test/a1/a2
./myfolder/test/a1/a2/a3

But a -not -name test2 will not avoid subdirs inside test2:

$ find ./myfolder -mindepth 1 -type d -not -name 'test2'
./myfolder/test2/one
./myfolder/test2/two
./myfolder/test
./myfolder/test/a1
./myfolder/test/a1/a2
./myfolder/test/a1/a2/a3

To do that, you need something like prune:

$ find ./myfolder -mindepth 1 -name test2 -prune -o -type d -print
./myfolder/test
./myfolder/test/a1
./myfolder/test/a1/a2
./myfolder/test/a1/a2/a3

But do not use delete, as it implies depth and that will start erasing from the longest path:

$ find ./myfolder -depth -mindepth 1 -name test2 -prune -o -type d -print
./myfolder/test/a1/a2/a3
./myfolder/test/a1/a2
./myfolder/test/a1
./myfolder/test

Either use rm -rf (remove the echo if you want to actually erase):

$ find ./myfolder -mindepth 1 -name test2 -prune -o -type d -exec echo rm -rf '{}' \;
rm -rf ./myfolder/test
rm -rf ./myfolder/test/a1
rm -rf ./myfolder/test/a1/a2
rm -rf ./myfolder/test/a1/a2/a3

Or, also use maxdepth if all you need is to delete directories (and everything inside) (remove the echo to actually erase):

$ find ./myfolder -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d -not -name test2 -exec echo rm -rf '{}' \;
rm -rf ./myfolder/test

A -delete will still fail if the directory is not empty:

$ find ./myfolder -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d -not -name test2 -delete
find: cannot delete ‘./myfolder/test’: Directory not empty