batch compressing dated files

[Jeff Hagstrom]

I have reports that are put into directories and are named by only the date(20030324.txt). I have these files dating back to the begining of the year. I want to compress all the files older then today minus 30 or everything older then this month (compress < 200303*). I don't know awk or pearl.

[Pete Randall · Accepted solution]

for i in `find /dir_name -mtime +30`
do
compress $i
done


Pete

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Jeff:

# cd
# find . -type f -xdev -mtime +30 -exec gzip {} \;

Regards!

...JRF...

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi Jeff,

Try the following

find /start_dir -mtime +30 -a -name "2003*.*" -exec compress {} \;

Notes:

1) Replace /start_dir with a relevant dir root to ease the search burden

2) The -a is a logical AND operator in the command

3) Try the command first with ll in place of compress to verify just WHICH files will be compressed

4) I'd recommend gzip over compress - generally compresses better.

HTH,
Jeff

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Well, if the filename is all you can trust then you must only use the filename for date calculations. We need to create a filename 30 days ago and any filename less than that (since you have wisely chosen YYYYMMDD format) is a candidate for compression.

I'll assume that you have cd'ed to the target directory.

P30FNAME=$(caljd.sh -y -s $(caljd.sh -p 30))".txt"

ls | while read FNAME
do
if [[ -f ${FNAME} ]]
then
if [[ "${FNAME}" < "${P30FNAME}" ]]
then
echo "Compress this file"
fi
fi
done


That should do it and here's caljd.sh to do the date calculations.

[Jeff Hagstrom]

Does -mtime look at the date on the file or the filename?

[Pete Randall]

-mtime looks at mod time.


Pete

[Pete Randall]

If you need to depend on the file's name, then you're better off with Clay's method.

Pete

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi,

-mtime +X where X=# days is the time of last modification.

atime = access time

ctime = change of status time

Rgds,
Jeff

[Jeff Hagstrom]

[NIKE-1 find /u/online/rcpt_aud -mtime +30 -a -name "2003*.*" -exec ll {} \;
find: cannot stat
/u/online/recpt_aud

????????

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi (again) Jeff:

The error, "cannot stat", means that there is no such directory in this case.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Pete Randall]

Jeff, the fact that you've spelled rcpt_aud both with and without the extra "e" (recpt_aud) makes me wonder what you actually tried to find on.


Pete