Why does purge not delete files?

Thanks @ncw. I did attempt that earlier however experienced errors. Please see the post above.

You tried this in that post

I mean try this

rclone delete --dry-run --files-from filelist.txt dropbox:

Sorry @ncw. I overlooked the suggestion of using delete as opposed to deletefile. Sleep deprivation has its downsides :slight_smile:

Is there any equivalent to selectively purge directories (with content)?

No worries!

It depends exactly what you want. If you want to delete everything from a directory use rclone purge.

You can use filters to specify directories, so --include /path/to/dir/** will include all files things in the root of the remote with the path path/to/dir so everything in that directory and subdirectories.

You could use rclone delete --dry-run --include "/path/to/dir/**" remote: to delete that directory

You can repeat the --include filter.

This will only delete files though so you'd need to follow it up with rclone rmdirs remote:path/to/dir to delete any empty directories

Thanks @ncw.

If the objective is to delete select directories such as dir1,dir4, dir20 (with contents), would it be safe to assume that the command would be rclone --dry-run --include dir1/** --include dir4/** --include dir20/** remote: assuming that dir1, dir4 and dir20 are in the root directory.

Almost... you want --include /dir1/** etc to ensure you delete dir only in the root, not anywhere in the directory structure.

Thanks for the suggestion @ncw. If / is absent such as dir1 does the command delete child directories? I would have thought that it would delete the relative path to the remote location.

--include "dir/**"

means any files in a directory called "dir" anywhere under the remote.

--include "/dir/**"

means any files in a directory called "dir" in the transfer root

Leading / makes the include at the root of the transfer otherwise it is anywhere in the transfer.

Thanks for the clarification @ncw.

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