Delete specific files within a directory. How can i do it?

Question

I'm a teacher and I have a lot of files (hundreds) with different names in different directories *for example "religion guide.docx","natural sciences guide.pdf" ,"Algebra 2 Guide.pdf". I intend to leave only the math and physics and delete the rest but in batches, how do I make MMA allow me to choose the directory with which I want to operate and make a database with keywords of things that I want to delete something like,this is a possible example: $Delete [ *religion*.* , *naturales*.* etc]$ Hope it's understandable

Answer 1

Here is how I might approach it. I would make a list of directories to look in.

dirsToClean = {"C:\\Users\\rpotter\\Downloads", 
  "C:\\Users\\rpotter\\Documents", "C:\\Users\\rpotter\\Desktop"};

Then I would make a list of keywords.

keywords = {"test", "temp",".tmp"};

And add wildcards to either side of the keywords.

keywordsWC = "*" <> # <> "*" & /@ keywords
(*{"*test*", "*temp*", "*.tmp*"}*)

Now I can search for those files.

filesToDelete = FileNames[keywordsWC, dirsToClean, IgnoreCase -> True] (*Or False as desired*)

If everything looks good we can delete them.

DeleteFile[filesToDelete]

But maybe before deleting them we move them to a folder so we can look through them first.

CreateDirectory["c:\\FilesToDelete"]
RenameFile[#, 
   FileNameJoin[{"c:\\FilesToDelete", 
     FileNameSplit[#][[-1]]}]] & /@ filesToDelete

And then just delete all the files in that directory.