Big mistaking extracting files, how to "undo" it?

[Matthew Saltzman]

On Sun, 30 Jan 2005, Leandro Melo wrote:

> Hi.
> I had a zip file which i needed to extract.
> This zip file contains a base folder in which there are a few subfolders, etc...
> I opened the zip file with file roller, which naturally showed me the
> base folder (the one i just mentioned). Then I set it to extract this
> file under /usr/.
> Specifically, this was the Eclipse project file. The zip file contains
> a base folder called eclipse in which are all the subfolders and
> project files.
> Then i thought that file roller would extract the files to me in a way
> that i would maitain the same hierarchy. So, i thought i would have
> the folder /usr/eclipse and under /usr/eclipse i would have the other
> subfolders and files.
> The problem is that when i told it to extract, file roller simply
> extract all FILES of the original zip file undre /usr/. So now i got
> hundreds of file under my /usr/ directory.
> Addionally, file roller didn't create any of the subfolders of the
> eclipse base folder (which, as said, was not created either).
> What could i do to "undo" this process? I'm very new to linux.
> Is there a way i to delete files created at some specific date??? So i
> just would go with this. For example: Delete all files created after
> saturday 30.
>
> Also, i could delete only all FILES from my /usr/ dir, which before
> the whole thing only had subfolders. Maybe i could use rm for that,
> but as i'm a linux beginner i'm not sure which comannda line options
> to use. Maybe: rm -/usr/*
>
> Well, any help is appreciated.

"rm /usr/*" will delete only files in the directory /usr.  Directories 
will remain intact.  To recursively delete directories and their contents, 
use "rm -r <path>".  If you are getting prompts for every file, use "\rm 
/usr/*".  Read "man rm" carefully.

FYI, here's the contents of my /usr/ dir:

$ ls /usr
bin  etc    include  kerberos  libexec  lost+found  share  tmp
doc  games  java     lib       local    sbin        src    X11R6

(I added the symlink /usr/doc -> /usr/share/doc.  /usr/java is 
installed by Java.  lost+found appears in every partition.  The rest are 
FC directories (well, tmp is a symlink).)

I use unzip from the command line to unpack .zip files.  Never tried the 
file roller, to be honest.

There are Eclipse RPMs at Jpackage (www.jpackage.org), although it takes 
some setting up to get it all to work together.

-- 
 		Matthew Saltzman

Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs