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

[James McKenzie]

Matthew Saltzman wrote:
> 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.
> 
If you were do delete the /usr directory, you will end up reinstalling 
Linux.  I recommend the following:

unzip -t <insert zip file name here> > filelist.txt

list out filelist.txt to a printer.

You can then use this file as input to a script file which can then step 
through the file and rm (remove) the files that were extracted in the 
/usr directory by accident

-- 
James McKenzie