How do I delete all files smaller than a certain size in all subfolders?

I have a folder with many sub-folders containing small tif files (less than 160kb) which have been merged together in bigger pdf files, together with some big multi-page tif files.

I want to delete all small tif files without deleting the bigger files (tif or pdf) and retaining the directory structure. How do I go about it on Linux using the command-line?

Solution 1:

find . -name "*.tif" -type 'f' -size -160k -delete

Run the command without -delete first to verify that the correct files are found.

Note the - before 160k. Just 160k means exactly 160 kilobytes. -160k means smaller than 160 kilobytes. +160k means larger than 160 kilobytes.

The -type 'f' forces the command to only act on files and skip directories. this would avoid errors if the path contains folders with names that match the pattern *.tif.

If you want to filter size in bytes (as in 160 bytes instead of 160 kilobytes) then you have to write it like this: 160c. If you just write 160 it will be interpreted as 160*512 bytes. This is a strange requirement by POSIX. Read here for more details: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/259208/purpose-of-find-commands-default-size-unit-512-bytes