Shell Programming and Scripting

Simple question I am sure - but one that I dont know the answer to nevertheless..


I have a directory that I store log files in - but I wish to run a daily script in cron to delete all files in this directory that have not been modified within the last 7 days...

Can anyone help me?

hiho,
to remove all files in the directory that have not been accessed for a week:

# find $DIR -atime +7 -exec rm {} \;

greetings Preßy

pressy's answer is correct. But if you anticipate having a lot of files to delete, you'll save time by piping the output of find to rm via xargs, thus:

Code:

find $DIR -atime +7 -print | xargs rm

(The "-print" argument may not be necessary if your version of find is relatively modern.)

be on the safer side.

find $DIR -type f -atime +7 -exec rm -f {} \; -print

the -type f insures that you only delete files. nothing else. and the -print is in for good mesure so you can see what is being delted if you want to keep a log of that and what not or you just want to tripple verify you didnt delete the wrong stuff.

Good idea to print what is being deleted, however, since the command is being run via cron, I doubt the user will be there to see it! Better to redirect the output to a log (though this will cause another log that will need trimming )

email the output to yourself. i do this all the time to keep records.

If your filenames might have spaces, I think this is the best solution:

Code:

find $DIR -type f -atime +7 -print | while read x; do
    echo "$x"
    rm "$x"
done

If you're running this as a cron job (or as part of one) the 'echo "$x"' will cause the list of deleted files to be mailed to you.

Of course, this version negates the large-number-of-files advantage of my previous version. Hmmm ... does Optimus_P's solution get rid of the need for the while loop when filenames may have spaces? Is it necessary to put quotes around {} in a find command to preserve spaces if, for instance, some file name has two consecutive spaces in it?