topic removing files older than 10 days in Operating System - Linux

removing files older than 10 days

p7 — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 11:34:45 GMT

hi all

we have a directory that the client dumps many reports into daily but its variable day by day (hundreds to few). to save space, they want me to keep only files that have been created in the last 7 days and delete
everything else in that directory.

here is the command i have:
find /col1ap01/metafile/metarprt/completed -type f -mtime +7 -exec|xargs rm

is that look ok or is there a better way
u mite know of?

thx in advance

Re: removing files older than 10 days

James R. Ferguson — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 11:46:11 GMT

Hi:

Drop the '-exec' since you are passing the stream onto 'xargs'.

# find /col1ap01/metafile/metarprt/completed -type f -mtime +7 | xargs rm

Also, there is no such thing as a "creation" date in Unix. Thc closest you get is the last 'modification" timestamp ('mtime') which will coincidently equal a creation point at the moment of creation.

Regards!

...JRF...

Re: removing files older than 10 days

Sundar_7 — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 13:45:28 GMT

Why do you even need xargs ? I dont believe that can be efficient than using exec

# find /col1ap01/metafile/metarprt/completed -type f -mtime +7 -exec rm {} \;

Re: removing files older than 10 days

Patrick Wallek — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 14:11:48 GMT

Actually xargs is MORE efficient than the '-exec' option in find.

The '-exec' option will spawn a separate process for each rm to remove each file. xargs works with groups of files, so you don't spawn as many processes.

Re: removing files older than 10 days

James R. Ferguson — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 14:17:48 GMT

Hi:

> Patrick noted, "Actually xargs is MORE efficient than the '-exec' option in find."

However, if you are running 11i *and* you use '-exec command \+' instead of '-exec command \;' then the '-exec' collects multiple arguments much in the fashion of 'xargs' leading to a vast improvement in performance!

Regards!

...JRF...