How to remove multiple deleted files in Git repository

I have deleted some files and git status shows as below.

I have committed and pushed.

GitHub still shows the deleted files in the repository. How can I delete files in the GitHub repository?

# On branch master
# Changes not staged for commit:
#   (use "git add/rm <file>..." to update what will be committed)
#   (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)
#
#	deleted:    modules/welcome/language/english/kaimonokago_lang.php
#	deleted:    modules/welcome/language/french/kaimonokago_lang.php
#	deleted:    modules/welcome/language/german/kaimonokago_lang.php
#	deleted:    modules/welcome/language/norwegian/kaimonokago_lang.php

If I use git rm, it gives the following.

usage: git rm [options] [--] <file>...

-n, --dry-run         dry run
-q, --quiet           do not list removed files
--cached              only remove from the index
-f, --force           override the up-to-date check
-r                    allow recursive removal
--ignore-unmatch      exit with a zero status even if nothing matched

git add -u 

updates all your changes

Be very cautious about git rm .; it might remove more than you want. Of course, you can recover, but it is simpler not to have to do so.

Simplest would be:

git rm modules/welcome/language/english/kaimonokago_lang.php \
       modules/welcome/language/french/kaimonokago_lang.php \
       modules/welcome/language/german/kaimonokago_lang.php \
       modules/welcome/language/norwegian/kaimonokago_lang.php

You can't use shell wildcards because the files don't exist, but you could use (in Bash at least):

git rm modules/welcome/language/{english,french,german,norwegian}/kaimonokago_lang.php

Or consider:

git status | sed -n '/^# *deleted:/s///p' | xargs git rm

This takes the output of git status, doesn't print anything by default (sed -n), but on lines that start # deleted:, it gets rid of the # and the deleted: and prints what is left; xargs gathers up the arguments and provides them to a git rm command. This works for any number of files regardless of similarity (or dissimilarity) in the names.

Another version to ByScripts answer is

git rm $(git ls-files --deleted)

This will ONLY remove the deleted files from the git.

It could be also be used for adding ONLY modified files also.

git add $(git ls-files --modified)

These commands also works on gitbash for windows.

Update all changes you made:

git add -u

The deleted files should change from unstaged (usually red color) to staged (green). Then commit to remove the deleted files:

git commit -m "note"

The best solution if you don't care about staging modified files is to use git add -u as said by mshameers and/or pb2q.

If you just want to remove deleted files, but not stage any modified ones, I think you should use the ls-files argument with the --deleted option (no need to use regex or other complex args/options) :

git ls-files --deleted | xargs git rm

Yes, git rm <filename> will stage the deleted state of a file, where <filename> could be a glob pattern:

$ git rm modules/welcome/language/*/kaimonokago_lang.php
rm modules/welcome/language/english/kaimonokago_lang.php
rm modules/welcome/language/french/kaimonokago_lang.php
rm modules/welcome/language/german/kaimonokago_lang.php
rm modules/welcome/language/norwegian/kaimonokago_lang.php

$ git status
# On branch master
# Changes to be committed:
#   (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)
#
#       deleted:    modules/welcome/language/english/kaimonokago_lang.php
#       ...

Then, you can commit.

git commit -a will do this in one go, if you want.

You can also use git add -u to stage all the changes, including all the deleted files, then commit.

When I have a lot of files I've deleted that are unstaged for commit, you can git rm them all in one show with:

for i in `git status | grep deleted | awk '{print $3}'`; do git rm $i; done

As question answerer mentioned, be careful with git rm.

Try this:

 git rm `git ls-files -d`

You can use

git commit -m "remove files" -a
git push

After you had delete files manually.

You can create a shell script which will remove all your files when run:

git status | grep deleted | awk '{print "git rm " $3;}' > ../remove.sh

The script that is created is remove.sh and it contains the full list of git rm commands.

git status | sed 's/^#\s*deleted:\s*//' | sed 's/^#.*//' | xargs git rm -rf

I had this issue of ghost files appearing in my repo after I deleted them and came across this neat command!

git add -A

It's essentially the same as git add -a and git add -u combined, but it's case sensitive. I got it from this awesome link (this link points to the version on archive.org now, because the original has converted to a spam/phishing page as of June 2016)

If you want to delete all of them by using "git rm". This is what I do:

git ls-files --deleted -z | xargs -0 git rm

This query lists of all the files that have been removed and deletes them from your git repository. Hope it helps.

git add -u .

git add --update .

The built in clean function can also be helpful...

git clean -fd

Here is how to detect deleted files and stage their deletion as part of the next commit. All the solutions on this thread have different merits. This solution bellow specifically deals with the problem of file names with spaces in them.

git status --porcelain | awk '/^.D .*$/ {print $0}' | sed 's/.D \(.*\)/\1/' | tr -d '"' | xargs -I {} git rm '{}'

make sure you test this with git's --dry-run option before running it with the following:

git status --porcelain | awk '/^.D .*$/ {print $0}' | sed 's/.D \(.*\)/\1/' | tr -d '"' | xargs -I {} git rm --dry-run '{}'

explanation:

git status --porcelain

This prints out something like D "/path to a folder/path to a file" which happens only when there are spaces in the path names

awk '/^.D .*$/ {print $0}'

match only lines that start with " D "

sed 's/ D \(.*\)/\1/'

remove " D " from the front of each string

tr -d '"'

remove quotes, if any

xargs -I {} git rm '{}'

define file name variables as {} run file name under git rm enclosed in single quotes in order to make sure that it supports file names with spaces.