topic Re: Simple script to delete files in Operating System - HP-UX

Simple script to delete files

Laurie_2 — Tue, 19 Feb 2002 19:58:53 GMT

Hi all you script guru's:

I need a script to go thur
all the files to find
Makefile.lcl and delete that file (but not delete Makefile).

I did a:

find / -name Makefile.lcl

and got 7 pages and I was
deleting them one a time and
I said hey a script could do
this.

I know it's very simple but
I can't afford to delete anything else (unemployment
seems scarey in today's
economy).

Could someone send me a
simple and safe delete script?
I'm using HP-UX 11.0 csh but
I'm open to any shell type.

TIA,
Laurie

Re: Simple script to delete files

A. Clay Stephenson — Tue, 19 Feb 2002 20:07:49 GMT

How about this:

find / -name 'Makefile.lcl' -exec rm {} \;

I really prefer not to do a find from / but rather to cd to the desired directory and do a find . instead. Before you do the -exec rm {} \; I suggest that you find do a harmless command like -exec echo {} \; first.

Re: Simple script to delete files

harry d brown jr — Tue, 19 Feb 2002 20:08:17 GMT

laurie,

just extend your "find"

find / -name "Makefile\.lcl" -exec rm {} \;

Note the quotes and "escaped" period to get an exact file match.

live free or die
harry

Re: Simple script to delete files

Rodney Hills — Tue, 19 Feb 2002 20:19:53 GMT

If you have a lot of these files, then a more efficient form of find is to pipe the file names to "xargs" to remove multiple files in fewer forked processes.

find / -name Makefile.lcl -print | xargs rm -f

-- Rod Hills

Re: Simple script to delete files

Craig Rants — Tue, 19 Feb 2002 20:20:25 GMT

To do this in a script:
#!/bin/sh
find / -name 'Makefile.lcl' > /tmp/make.list
for i in `cat /tmp/make.list`
do
rm $i
done

The find should work faster, but for loops will always be your friend.

GL,
C

Re: Simple script to delete files

Alan Riggs — Tue, 19 Feb 2002 20:29:40 GMT

find from / is a performance killer. Use du -a instead if you care about system load:

du -a |awk '$2 ~ "Makefile.lcl$" {print $2}|xargs rm