topic Re: Script to delete outdated files in Operating System - HP-UX

Script to delete outdated files

Ed Hon — Thu, 18 Sep 2003 13:07:08 GMT

I want to write a script to examine the files in a directory (non-recursively) and delete the ones over x days old. How do I perform the date comparison?

Re: Script to delete outdated files

Stefan Farrelly — Thu, 18 Sep 2003 13:11:53 GMT

use the find command, it does the date comparison for you;

cd
find . -mtime +7 -exec rm {} \;

This will delete all files in this dir older than 7 days.

Re: Script to delete outdated files

Pete Randall — Thu, 18 Sep 2003 13:14:57 GMT

I was going to suggest they find command as well but I'm not sure how to make it non-recursive which I assume to mean that you don't want to traverse underlying subdirectories. I assume you'll have to write a script using Clays caljd.sh to do date comparisons.

Pete

Re: Script to delete outdated files

Jeff Schussele — Thu, 18 Sep 2003 13:19:48 GMT

Hi Ed,

To do the find nonrecursively add
! -depth
So Stefan's command would be

find . ! -depth -mtime +7 -exec rm -i {} \;

Note I added the -i to rm to have it query you just in case you find files you wish to retain.
If it's a long list & you don't want answer Y/N to them all then just replace rm with ll to get a listing & remove the -i

HTH,
Jeff

Re: Script to delete outdated files

Pete Randall — Thu, 18 Sep 2003 13:21:50 GMT

(duh!! - thanks, Jeff!)

Re: Script to delete outdated files

Ralph Grothe — Thu, 18 Sep 2003 13:57:53 GMT

If you don't want to recurse, does it mean you'd simply want to stat files in the selected directory?
Sorry, for my silly question but English isn't my native tongue.

If so then I doubt that the suggested "! -depth" will work.
Instead you should use find's -prune switch.
But I guess fiddling together an appropiate -prune logic will be more cumbersome than putting together a few lines of Perl (or even C if you prefer) that simply use the syscalls opendir() and readdir().

If you don't want to engulf submounts in the find you'd have to use the -xdev switch.

Re: Script to delete outdated files

Jeff Schussele — Thu, 18 Sep 2003 14:06:54 GMT

I stand corrected - -prune it is.
Good catch Ralph.

Rgds,
Jeff

Re: Script to delete outdated files

Ed Hon — Thu, 18 Sep 2003 14:33:12 GMT

Jeff,

If cd to /dumpdat1 and do

find . -depth -mtime +3

I get as output several lines with file names in /dumpdat1, but if I do

find . ! -depth -mtime +3

all my output disappears.

Ed

Re: Script to delete outdated files

Ed Hon — Thu, 18 Sep 2003 14:38:24 GMT

find . -prune -mtime +3
find . ! -prune -mtime +3

Either gives me no output.

Ed

Re: Script to delete outdated files

Leif Halvarsson_2 — Thu, 18 Sep 2003 14:47:12 GMT

Hi,
try

find . -mtime +7 -print |while read a
do
if [ $(dirname $a) = "." ]
then
rm $a
fi
done

Re: Script to delete outdated files

Stefan Farrelly — Thu, 18 Sep 2003 14:55:02 GMT

sorry, the format for find to delete files ONLY in the current dir is;

find . $ -type d ! -name . -prune $ -o $ -type f -mtime +7 ! -name "." -print $ -exec rm {} \;

Try it, works fine.

Re: Script to delete outdated files

Todd McDaniel_1 — Thu, 18 Sep 2003 15:34:53 GMT