find files to remove but skip subdirectories

[Frank de Vries]

I have an hpux 11.00 box
with a /tmp that has number (about 20)
of subdirectories like .oracle and .tivoli
and a couple of others , which I do not like to search for removal.

I want to cleanup all files older then 7 days
in /tmp but not in /tmp/.oracle and /tmp/.tivoli, /tmp/xxx/, /tmp/yyy etc..

find . -name "*" -type f -print -mtime +7 -exec rm {} \;
Will remove also files in the subdirectories
of /tmp when the files are older then 7 days.

Thanks for your input.

[Peter Godron]

Frank,
-prune option

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=975377

[Jean-Yves Picard]

hello,

what about

find /tmp \( -name .oracle -prune \) \( -name .tivoli -prune \) -type f -print -mtime +7 -exec rm {} \;

or in case you like to search .oracle (et all) file in deep subdirectory

find . -name "*" -type f -mtime +7 -print |\
awk -F/ '$2 == ".oracle" { next }
$2 == ".tivoli" { next }
{printf "rm -f %s\n",$0 ;}' | ksh

Jean-Yves Picard

[Pete Randall]

The -prune option is generally recommended but I have to wonder:

# find /tmp |wc -l
79

# find /tmp -prune |wc -l
1

# find /tmp/* -prune |wc -l
69

# find /tmp/* |wc -l
69

So, following down through subdirectories, we come up with 79 entries. With prune, we only see /tmp itself. By changing the starting point and using prune, we come up with 69 entries. By changing the starting point and not bothering with prune, we still come up with 69 entries. It leads me to question what prune is really doing???????


Pete

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Frank:

# find /tmp -type f -mtime +7 ! -path "/tmp/.oracle/*" -a ! -path "/tmp/.tivoli/*" | xargs rm

Note the use of '! -path'.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Peter Nikitka · Accepted solution]

Hi,

why use find, when you do not want to look for files recursivly?
Suggestion:

> date
Wed Oct 25 14:04:01 METDST 2006
> cd /tmp
> touch 10181405 .rmflag
> for f in *
do
[ -d $f -o $f -nt .rmflag ] && continue
rm -i $f
done

Drop the -i - flag if you are shure ...
If you need to create .rmflag dynamically, you'll have to do date arithmetics.

mfG Peter



date
touch

[Frank de Vries]

Pulling together the bits of info
from all your answers I constructed this
find command that works for me.

Please note I have over 20 subdirectories,
and I am very lazy typist so the answers
with ( !path .oracle ) are not for me.

find /tmp/* -type f -prune -mtime +3 -print -exec rm {} \;

this removes only files stricly in /tmp and
not in its subdirectories and it prints which ones were older then 3 days.