find command

[Ragni Singh]

Hey guys,

what am I doing wrong here. I'm running this command and it doesn't seem to be doing what I'm asking.

find /home/jonny -name test.log.* -type f -mtime +14 -exec rm -f {} ;

I am running this out of my home directory. Trying to find for the file and remove it if the file hasn't been modified in over 14 days. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

[Victor BERRIDGE]

Hi
I think you forgot the backslash at the end of your line before the ;

All the best

Victor

[James A. Donovan]

try...
find /home/jonny -name "test.log.*" -a -type f -a -mtime +14 -exec rm -f {} \;

instead.

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

Do you have the backslash at the command's end (before the semicolon)?

# find /home/jonny -name test.log.* -type f -mtime +14 -exec rm -f {} \;

Regards!

...JRF...

[harry d brown jr]

Depending upon the shell, you should quote the name string because of the wild card.

find /home/jonny -name "test.log.*" -type f -mtime +14 -exec rm -f {} ;

live free or die
harry

[Justo Exposito]

Hi,

I Think that:
find /home/jonny -name "test.log.*" -a -type f -a -mtime +14 -exec rm -f {} \;

Regards,

Justo.

[harry d brown jr]

If you left off the backslash, then you would get this error:

find: -exec not terminated with ';'

Probably a bad cut and paste ;-)

live free or die
harry

[David Navarro]

Hi,
Try this:

find /home/jonny -name "test.log.*" -type f -mtime +14 -exec rm -f {} \;

Best luck

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Hi Sanman:

You have two problems:

1) As mentiopned you need the \ character before the ';'.

2) You need SINGLE QUOTES around your -n wildcard pattern because you do not want the shell toi expand the filename but rather you want to pass the wildcard string unmodified into find.

Regards, Clay

[Bill Hassell · Accepted solution]

And as a debug note: NEVER include the -exec option (especially with rm -f) until you are sure the find actually returns the names you expect. A catastrophic result will take place if you accidently put a space in front of the * for your -name parameter!