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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. – jm666 Jul 18 '14 at 21:51.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. – Mawg says reinstate Monica Mar 10 '15 at 9:07