How to move files over a certain age to a different directory

[Andrew Kaplan]

Hi there --

I need to move a large series of files that are over a certain age, ie: dated or time stamped before January 1 2009, from one directory to another one.

What would the correct syntax be in order to accomplish this? The operating system in question is HP-UX 11.00. Thanks.

[Pete Randall · Accepted solution]

something like this:

touch reference -t[[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.SS]

find onedir -type f ! -newer reference |xargs mv anotherdir

Without testing, I think that's right.


Pete

[Tim Nelson]

cd /path/to/files
find ./ -type f -mtime +365 -exec mv {} /new/dir/ \;

some form of this should do it..

[Pete Randall]

Here, this one does work:

touch reference -t[[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.SS]

find onedir -type f ! -newer reference -exec mv {} /anotherdir \;


Pete

[Andrew Kaplan]

Hi there --

Thanks for your responses. I implemented Tim Nelson's suggestion, and it worked very well.

I will make sure to assign points to both of you, and even though I did not use Pete Randall's method, the least I can do is to give points as gratitude.

Thanks again to you both.

[Viktor Balogh]

Hi,

just a note: mv can handle multiple parameters too, so this solution would be faster than the above

find ./ -type f -mtime +365 -exec mv {} /new/dir/ \+

note the + sign at the end instead of ; -> this feeds all the founded files to a single mv process

[Dennis Handly]

>Viktor: mv can handle multiple parameters too, so this solution would be faster than the above

Except you can't get there from here.

>find ./ -type f -mtime +365 -exec mv {} /new/dir/ +

The Posix standard only allows you to put the {} right before the +.
See these other threads where I introduce an auxiliary script to do the work:
http://forums.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1331996
http://forums.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1133772
http://forums.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1383497
http://forums.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1111050