Have you ever needed to clean up a project directory but didn’t want to lose your hidden files or the all-important README.md?

Let’s talk about a simple, safe, and powerful command-line trick to do just that — using find.

🧩 The Problem

Say you’ve built and compiled several binaries, created temporary files, or generated test outputs. You want to wipe everything except:

• Hidden files (e.g., .git, .env, .gitignore)
• README.md

But using something like rm * will delete almost everything — and it won’t touch hidden files, which can be misleading. You need a smarter, safer approach.

✅ The Solution

find . -maxdepth 1 ! -name '.*' ! -name 'README.md' ! -name '.' -exec rm -rf {} + 

🔍 Breakdown:

• find . -maxdepth 1: Only search in the current directory (not recursively).
• ! -name '.*': Don’t touch hidden files/directories.
• ! -name 'README.md': Keep your documentation safe.
• ! -name '.': Prevent deleting the current directory.
• -exec rm -rf {} +: Delete everything else — files and folders.

Before:

$ ls -al calculator calculator.c func func.c hello hello.c ... .git .gitignore README.md 

After:

$ find . -maxdepth 1 ! -name '.*' ! -name 'README.md' ! -name '.' -exec rm -rf {} + $ ls -al .git .gitignore README.md 

🛡️ Safety Tip

Before running rm -rf, test the output with:

find . -maxdepth 1 ! -name '.*' ! -name 'README.md' ! -name '.' -exec echo {} + 

This prints the files that would be deleted.

Finally run:

find . -maxdepth 1 ! -name '.*' ! -name 'README.md' ! -name '.' -exec rm -rf {} +