Linux command to delete all files except .git folder?

Question

I want to delete all of the current directory\'s content except for the .git/ folder before I copy the new files into the branch.

Answer 1

As Crayon mentioned in the comments, the easy solution would be to just move .git out of the directory, delete everything, and then move it back in. But if you want to do it the fancy way, find has got your back:

find -not -path "./.git/*" -not -name ".git" | grep git
find -not -path "./.git/*" -not -name ".git" -delete

The first line I put in there because with find, I always want to double-check to make sure it's finding what I think it is, before running the -delete.

Edit: Had a braindead moment, didn't just copy from my terminal.

Edit2: Added -not -name ".git", which keeps it from trying to delete the .git directory, and suppresses the errors. Depending on the order find tries to delete things, it may fail on non-empty directories.