volatile is a destructive program that removes files based on a whitelist or blacklist. Use with caution.

It’s use case is meaningful when dealing with volatile directories, where many leftovers often reside, like the .cache directory.

1 Features

• Remove files based on whitelist or blacklist
• Remove empty directories
• Supports regex

2 Usage

volatile | Wipe files using a whitelist or blacklist

Usage:  volatile [OPTIONS] [DIR]

Options:
  -D, --debug
          Enable debug mode
  -V, --verbose
          Enable verbosity
  -d, --dry
          Preview actions
  -f, --file <FILE>
          Use an alternative allowlist file
  -h, --help
          Displays this message and exits
  -i, --invert
          Enable blacklist mode

2.1 Examples

volatile defaults it’s working directory to the current directory. If an allowlist file is not found, it’ll exit preventing destructive actions. The default allowlist file is allowlist.txt.

An allowlist consists of filenames with regex support:

.*\.c$
.*\.h$
README\.md
data_[0-9]+\.txt

The file above will allow files ending with .c, .h, a file named README.md, and files named like data_2.txt. If no flags are passed to change volatile behaviour, this should eliminate all files, except the ones listed in this file, including the file itself. However, if the -i option is passed, the behaviour is inverted. In this case, volatile will remove all files included in this allowlist file.

Example:

❯ tree -L 1
.
├── fontconfig
├── glycin
├── librewolf
├── mesa_shader_cache
├── nvim
├── rofi-4.runcache
├── rofi-entry-history.txt
├── rustup
├── swww
├── swww-wallpaper.jpg
├── tree-sitter
├── ueberzugpp
├── wine
└── yay

# ~/myblacklist.txt

# Empty lines or lines starting with '#' are ignored.

^rofi-*
glycin
event*

volatile "$HOME/.cache" -i -f "myblacklist.txt"

❯ tree -L 1
.
├── fontconfig
├── librewolf
├── mesa_shader_cache
├── nvim
├── rustup
├── swww
├── swww-wallpaper.jpg
├── tree-sitter
├── ueberzugpp
├── wine
└── yay

3 Compiling

gcc volatile.c -o volatile

4 License

This project is available as public-domain under the CC0 License.