Re: newbie rm --^file question

[Akihiko Hohji <akhst7@xxxxxx>]

Sorry.  Actually extended glob was due to auto-correction by Apple Mail.  I really typed in setopt extendedglob.

Either rm -rf with double “-“ ^file.ext.* or a single “-“ does not work.  I get the same “no matches found” message.  And there is no space in between “-“.  I’ve gotten this approach with the double “-“ from a post in Stackoverflow.  If I don’t add “*” at the end or begging of file name, it works fine.  

To just give you more details, the following is the list of files in  /System/Library/Caches;

drwxr-xr-x  16 root  wheel   544B Dec 16 21:53 .
drwxr-xr-x  92 root  wheel   3.1K Dec 16 09:31 ..
drwxr-xr-x   6 root  wheel   204B Dec 15 21:47 com.apple.CVMS
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel    42K Oct  4 21:52 com.apple.Components2.SystemCache.Components
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel    57K Sep 13 20:49 com.apple.Components2.SystemCache.QuickTimeComponents
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel   8.6K Dec 16 09:31 com.apple.IntlDataCache.le
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel    78K Dec 16 09:31 com.apple.IntlDataCache.le.kbdx
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel    21K Dec 16 09:35 com.apple.app-sandbox-cache.plist
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel    41B Dec 16 09:32 com.apple.bootefisignature
drwxr-xr-x   3 root  wheel   102B Dec 15 21:36 com.apple.bootstamps
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel    68B Dec 15 21:36 com.apple.corestorage
drwx------   3 root  wheel   102B Dec 17 22:30 com.apple.coresymbolicationd
drwxr-xr-x   4 root  wheel   136B Dec 15 21:36 com.apple.kext.caches
-rw-r--r--@  1 root  wheel    23K Dec 16 21:53 com.apple.preferencepanes.systemcache
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel    11K Dec 16 09:35 com.apple.xpc.extensions.cache
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel   203K Dec 16 09:35 com.apple.xpchelper.cache

I’d like to get rid of directories and files except com.apple.IntlDataCche.le and com.apple.IntlDataCche.le.kbdx.  

And I did;

setopt extendedglob
rm -rf -^com.apple.IntlDataCache.*

Then I get zsh: no matches found: -^com.apple.IntlDataCache.le.*

Again my system is 

sw_vers
ProductName:	Mac OS X
ProductVersion:	10.12.2
BuildVersion:	16C67 

Thanks.  

AH

> On Dec 25, 2016, at 4:10 PM, Bart Schaefer <schaefer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> On Dec 25,  7:22pm, Hoji, Akihiko wrote:
> }
> } setopt extended glob
> 
> If you literally did that, you should have gotten an error message; there
> is no option named "extended" although there is one named "glob".
> 
> You can use underscores or hyphens between words (actually, between any
> two letters) in option names, but not spaces.
> 
> setopt extendedglob
> setopt extended_glob
> setopt extended-glob
> setopt EX_tend-ed_GLOB
> 
> } rm -rf -^file.ext.*
> 
> Is there a space missing there between the second "-" and the "^" ?  Or
> do the files you want to remove really have names beginning with "-" ?
> 
> } I would appreciate a poster as to what I am doing wrong. 
> 
> Other than misplaced spacing, you seem to have it; see Gabor's example.