Remove two files ending by ~ and # in Bash?

Question

Why is not working? I'm trying to remove files ending by ~ and #

find . (-name "*~" -o -name "*#") -delete

Answer 1

In POSIX shells (incl. bash) you need to escape the parentheses.

find .  \( -name "*~" -o -name "*#"  \) -delete

Here's a working example (run in an empty directory)

#!/usr/bin/bash -eu
mkdir -p a/b/c d/e f
touch a/a~ a/b/b~ 'd/e/e#' 'f/f#' 'root#' 'root~'
find .  \( -name "*~" -o -name "*#"  \) -delete
find .

Answer 2

You need to escape the paranthesis so they get interpreted by find, not by the shell.

mkdir testme
cd testme
touch "foo~"
touch "bar#"
ls

# With parenthesis escaped
find . \( -name "*~" -o -name "*#" \) -delete

ls
cd ..
rmdir testme