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

     ...