Finding files that are n days before date

[Khalid A. Al-Tayaran]

Hi,

How can I find files in a directory that are for example 3 or 4 days old using the find command:

find -atime "????" /data1 -print

Thanks,,,

[Pete Randall · Accepted solution]

How about

find /data1 -mtime +3

?

Pete

[Jean-Louis Phelix]

hi,

As usual Pete is fast and rigth ... The complete syntax from the man page states :

In the descriptions of the primaries, the argument n represents a decimal integer; +n means more than n, -n means less than n, and n means exactly n.

so :

3 days old --> -mtime 3
more than 3 days old --> -mtime +3
less than 3 days old --> -mtime -3

Regards

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

# touch -mt 11160000 /tmp/ref
# cd
# find . ! -newer /tmp/ref

...finds files older than 11/16/2002...

# find . -newer /tmp/ref

...find files modified since 11/16...

Regards!

...JRF...

[harry d brown jr]

find / -type f \( -mtime +1 -a \( ! -mtime +2 \) \) -exec ls -l {} \;

live free or die
harry

[Khalid A. Al-Tayaran]

Hi,

Thanks gurus,,,

That was fast. Faster than news flash thses days...


Appriciate your help.

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi (again):

The use of 'mtime' (and its cousins 'atime' and 'ctime') base "day" on a 24-hour interval. In most cases this yields the user what is sought. If more granularity in time is desired when isolating files, the use of '-newer' with a reference file is an appropriate choice.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Khalid A. Al-Tayaran]

Hi again,,

I have 2 directories data1 and data2. Say under each is:

.../data1/sales
.../data1/logs
.../data1/suppliers

.../data2/sales
.../data2/logs
.../data2/suppliers

I want to search both directories and delete (rm -r) the sales directory and all files below it. "" Safely "". How to do that ??And what if one of the directories names are randomly generated by some program ?? say data1/bcgfrty
(Remove the bcgfrty directory) ??

[harry d brown jr]

To remove the "sales" directories, just do

rm -rf .../data1/sales .../data2/sales

With of course replacing the "..." with the appropriate "PATH". Now if you have more than just "data1" and "data2", say like up to data9, then this will work:

rm -rf .../data[0-9]/sales


As for "RANDOMLY" created directory names, you could do this to delete those and the "sales" directories:

cd to appropriate directory

find ./data[0-9]/* -type d -depth ! -name suppliers -a ! -name logs -exec rm -rf {} \;

OF COURSE, YOU SHOULD NEVER JUST EXECUTE A rm -rf WITHOUT FIRST DETERMINING IF IT IS GOING TO DO WHAT YOU WANT IT TO DO, so do this first:

find ./data[0-9]/* -type d -depth ! -name suppliers -a ! -name logs -exec echo rm -rf {} \;

live free or die
harry