Issue

I’m using bash shell on Ubuntu 16.04. I have a symlink set up like so

$ ls -al /home/myuser/web/current
lrwxrwxrwx 1 myuser myuser 40 Feb 25 15:49 /home/myuser/web/current -> /path/to/main/releases20220225152608

The “releases” directory contains several other directories

$ ls /path/to/main/releases
20220223111602
20220224122838
20220225152608

How would I delete all other child directories in “/path/to/main/releases“ that are not pointed at by the symlink, “/home/myuser/web/current”?

Solution

Try

for dir in /path/to/main/releases/*/; do
    [[ $dir -ef /home/myuser/web/current ]] || echo rm -r -- "$dir"
done

The [[ $path1 -ef $path2 ]] test checks if the two paths refer to the same item (file, directory, fifo, ...) on disk, regardless of what links (hard or soft) are traversed in either path.
Remove the echo if you are happy that the resulting code will do what you want.

Answered By - pjh

Answer Checked By - Dawn Plyler (PHPFixing Volunteer)