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I am looking for a free program that automatically removes all the useless hidden files from a selected USB drive.
The files I'm talking about are the ones like .Trashes, etc... (essentially all the ones that start with . (a period/full-stop).
Requirements:
You can use the following Python script to remove every file and folder starting with .. Install Python, cd to the root of your USB key and type python hidden_file_remover.py:
# Save this script as hidden_file_remover.py in the root of your USB key:
import os
import shutil
import sys
def main(folder_path):
for dirpath, dirnames, filenames in os.walk(folder_path):
for dirname in [d for d in dirnames if (d.startswith("."))]:
dirfullpath = os.path.join(dirpath, dirname)
print dirfullpath
try:
shutil.rmtree(dirfullpath)
except:
pass
for dirpath, dirnames, filenames in os.walk(folder_path):
for filename in [f for f in filenames if (f.startswith("."))]:
filepath = os.path.join(dirpath, filename)
print filepath
os.remove(filepath)
if __name__ == "__main__":
try:
folder_path = str(sys.argv[1])
except:
folder_path = "default_folder_path"
main(folder_path)
7zip can be more helpful. Although it is a compression tool there is an inbuilt explorer (far better than the Windows 7 one) in 7zip which can be used as another way to view/remove hidden files.
Terminal.appand remove the files withbashscript. Or, useAppleScriptorAutomator.appworkflow..is "useless". Some may be, but the origin of this naming is with Unix, where files which were important to system stability were so named. They wouldn't show up on a normal directory listing so that well meaning newbies wouldn't "tidy" them and destabilize the system. You might want to rethink a blanket approach to such files.