How do I find & delete old files?

[ITadvice]

I have been asked to create a file that will delete files that are older than 90 days. I am having trouble using the find command to find and delete the files. The files I want to delete are in one directory. Since the files have different names how can I find the old files without knowing what the names are? Should I use wildcards?

 

[KevinADC]

Perl has no 'find' function/command so I am not sure what your question is. There are a number of ways to get the list of files in a directory:

opendir/readdir
glob()
File::Find


Post your current code.

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- Kevin, perl coder unexceptional!

 

[Kirsle]

You can use stat() on a file and the 10th element returned (or 9th in the array index) is the "mtime", or "modified time", of the file. mtime is a value like Unix time() that you can compare with the current time() to see how old it is.

my ($mtime) = (stat("/path/to/old/file.lck"))[9];

# There are a ton of seconds in 90 days
my $limit = 60*60*24*90;

# See if this file is too darn old
if (time() - $mtime >= $limit) {
   print "the file is way ancient, deleting it!\n";
   unlink("/path/to/old/file.lck");
}

Look into the things Kevin listed to find out how to open a directory and read its contents. Then just substitute "/path/to/old/file.lck" with some $variable containing an arbitrary file name.

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[sycoogtit]

What OS are you on? Do you have to use perl? If you're on Linux, you can just do this from the shell:

find * -mtime +89

If you're on Windows or you have to use perl, then you can use File::Find and stat.

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