Remove files by date?

[orjazmik]

I'm looking to create a script that will allow me to remove files in a certain directory that are older than a certain date. What would be even cooler would be something where I could say that I want to remove everything more than a month old. Then I could just drop it in the cron and clean up the directory automatically. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

- Marshall

 

[dickiebird]

Create a script containing:

#!/bin/ksh
DATADIR=/your/directory
find ${DATADIR} -type f -name "*filename*" -mtime +31 -exec rm -f {} \;

Create a line in the crontab :
00 12 1 * * * myscript > a_log_if_you_want 2>&1

HTH ;-) Dickie Bird

Honi soit qui mal y pense

 

[orjazmik]

That is awesome! That did exactly what I needed it to. Thanks so much for your help. :-D

- Marshall

 

[rdbx]

Beware the find command is recursive
all sub-directories will be deal with the command
here the "exec rm -f {} " command is very dangerous

 

[toolkit]

You can make find non recursive using:

cd $DATADIR
find . \( -type d ! -name . -prune \)     -o \( -type f -mtime +31 -exec rm -f {} \; \)

This should prevent the find from recursing into sub directories of $DATADIR. This only works if your version of find supports the prune directive.

Cheers, Neil

 

[orjazmik]

Fortunately, the directory I was cleaning out had no sub-directories. But this is definitely good to know for future reference. Thanks so much!

- Marshall

 

[olded]

Hi:

I'm surprised nobody mentioned using xargs with find. It's been covered before in many threads. Check this one:

thread822-252908

Regards,

Ed