Add Remove Untracked Files From A Directory as a Git TIL

README.md

@@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ pairing with smart people at Hashrocket.
 
 For a steady stream of TILs, [sign up for my newsletter](https://crafty-builder-6996.ck.page/e169c61186).
 
-_1425 TILs and counting..._
+_1426 TILs and counting..._
 
 ---
 
@@ -321,6 +321,7 @@ _1425 TILs and counting..._
 - [Quicker Commit Fixes With The Fixup Flag](git/quicker-commit-fixes-with-the-fixup-flag.md)
 - [Rebase Commits With An Arbitrary Command](git/rebase-commits-with-an-arbitrary-command.md)
 - [Reference A Commit Via Commit Message Pattern Matching](git/reference-a-commit-via-commit-message-pattern-matching.md)
+- [Remove Untracked Files From A Directory](git/remove-untracked-files-from-a-directory.md)
 - [Rename A Remote](git/rename-a-remote.md)
 - [Renaming A Branch](git/renaming-a-branch.md)
 - [Resetting A Reset](git/resetting-a-reset.md)

git/remove-untracked-files-from-a-directory.md

@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
+# Remove Untracked Files From A Directory
+
+Let's say I have a directory (`spec/cassettes`) full of a ton of generated YAML
+files. Most of these files are tracked by git. However, I just generated a
+bunch of new ones that are untracked. For whatever reason, I don't want these
+files. I need to delete them.
+
+Running `rm` on each of them is going to be too tedious. And it is tricky to
+target them for a bulk delete since there are a ton of other files in that
+directory that I want to keep.
+
+One way to approach this is have `git ls-files` help out with listing all files in the
+directory that are untracked. The `--others` flag filters to untracked files.
+
+```bash
+git ls-files --others --exclude-standard spec/cassettes
+```
+
+From there, I can pipe it to `rm` (with `xargs` collapsing all the files into a
+single line):
+
+```bash
+git ls-files --others --exclude-standard spec/cassettes | xargs rm
+```
+
+See `man git-ls-files` for more details.