find

[Tommy Wang]

I got problem in performing the following command line:
% find . -type f -mtime +30 -exec rm{} ;

Why does it work?

Thanks in advance.

[Devbinder Singh Marway]

after the last } you need a space and backslash
i.e find ..... rm{} ;

[John Palmer]

Why does it work? or why doesn't it work?
What exactly is your problem?

The command
'find . -type f -mtime +30 -exec rm {} \;'

will remove files in the current directory (and any sub-directories) which have a modified time earlier than 31 days from now.

[Devbinder Singh Marway]

oops i may have the wrong end of the stick , do you want to know how it works ? or why doesn't it work ? ( too early... )

thanks

[federico_3]

The command you should run is:

find . -type f -mtime +30 -exec rm{} ;

Federico

[federico_3]

sorry i forgot......

find . -type f -mtime +30 -exec rm{} ;

[federico_3]

it seems that the back slash command before ";" can't be written

[Tommy Wang]

# ll |wc
84 749 5875
# find . -type f -mtime +30 -exec {} ;
# ll |wc
84 749 5875

I run the above command, but it doesn't work.

[John Palmer]

Kenny,

The 'rm' is missing from your last post, is that a typo?

Specifying a null command to '-exec' will not give an error and will do nothing.

What are the dates on your files?

I assume that the backslash has been eaten by the system. You need to type two(//) to get one on this forum.

Regards,
John

[federico_3 · Accepted solution]

try :

find . -type f -mtime +30 | xargs rm


I hope this helps

[Tommy Wang]

Thank you all for looking at this problem.

[wagley 2 10-18]

Hi all,

The backslash will be fixed in the next release scheduled for late October. Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention and for being so patient.

Kind regards,

Shayne Wagley
ITRC Forums Administrator
Hewlett-Packard