Argthtjtr

I have the following files:

$ ls *.png | egrep -i "am|pm"

output-0 11.42.30 AM.png

output-0 5.10.12 PM.png

....

I want to remove them but get this error:

$ ls *.png | egrep -i "am|pm" | while read line; do rm "$line"; done

rm: cannot remove ''$'33''[0m'$'33''[01;35moutput-0 11.42.30 AM.png'$'33''[0m': No such file or directory

rm: cannot remove ''$'33''[01;35moutput-0 5.10.12 PM.png'$'33''[0m': No such file or directory

rm: cannot remove ''$'33''[01;35moutput-1 11.42.30 AM.png'$'33''[0m': No such file or directory

What's the problem with my codes?

ls is risky in scripts and command lines. One problem is what is described in a comment by @PerlDuck, ANSI escape sequences for colour output. I would recommend another approach with find

• 
  

  Create test files

  
  
  

  touch 'output-0 11.42.30 AM.png' 'output-0 5.10.12 PM.png' asdf.png
  
  

  
  


• 
  

  Check that the findcommand line finds the files that you expect it to find

  
  
  

  find . -type f -iname "*[ap]m*.png"
  
  

  
  
  

  and do it

  
  
  

  find . -type f -iname "*[ap]m*.png" -delete
  
  

  
  
  

  If you don't want to search into subdirectories, add -maxdepth 1

  
  
  

  find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -iname "*[ap]m*.png" -delete
  
  

  
  


• 
  

  Check the result

  
  
  

  ls
  
  

  
  
  

  Files with am, pm, AM, PM in the name should be deleted but asdf.png is not deleted.

  
  

If you really want to use a while read loop in that way, then use a shell glob and printf with null delimiters e.g.

printf '%s' *.png | grep -zEi 'am|pm' | while IFS= read -r -d '' line; do echo "$line"; done

However, there are several ways to get bash to expand to a list of the files to be deleted directly - without the need to pipe to grep and while:

1. 
   

   using simple shell globs

   
   
   

   rm -- *[ap]m.png *[AP]M.png
   
   

   
   
   

   or - if you don't mind matching a .PNG extension as well - making use of the nocaseglob option

   
   
   

   shopt -s nocaseglob
   
   rm -- *[ap]m.png
   
   

   
   


2. 
   

   using extended globs

   
   
   

   shopt -s extglob
   
   rm -- *@(AM|PM).png *@(am|pm).png
   
   

   
   

or

    shopt -s extglob nocaseglob

    rm -- *@(am|pm).png

The -- marks the end of options, just in case there are filenames that begin with a hyphen - you can use a pattern with an explicit directory prefix like ./*(am|pm) instead if you prefer.

Add the -i or -I option if you want to review the file names interactively before deletion.