Hello any body,

I am looking for a help in writing a script to delete a directory as below scenario.

I have a directory called builds in that many directories are there named say 12343,45686,76543(number named )and other name like changelist,maven,logs ,name.txt,and other .sh files etc. I am looking a script which should keep all directories and 4 latest numbered directories.i.e I need to delete numbered directories and keeping latest 4 directories at any time.I have written a script which keeps 4 latest directories or files at any point of time.please look my script. I should modify such a way tht it should not deleted any files or directories other than numbered directory and at the same time I need to have 4 latest numbered directories (it may be 1 months old or what ever) oldest from fifth directory should be removed.

#!/bin/bash




# Scans a directory and deletes all and retains user specfied directory

#Usage: remov.sh /path/ dir number of files to keep





if [ $# -ne 2 ]; then

echo 1>&2 "Usage: $0 dir_path number of files to keep=4 "

exit 1

fi





cd $1

files_in_dir=`ls | wc -l`

files_to_delete=`expr $files_in_dir - $2`

if [ $files_to_delete -gt 0 ]; then

ls -t | tail -n $files_to_delete | xargs rm -rf

#ls -t will list files based on date and tail -n tails the list



#xargs will break the list of arguments into sublists small enough to be acceptable

if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then

echo “An error ocurred deleting the files”

exit 1

else

echo “$files_to_delete file deleted.”

fi

else

echo “Nothing to delete!”

fi

This will list the files/directories with numerals in the name, except the 4 oldest.

ls -ldt *[0-9]* | tail +5 | awk '{ print $9 }'

it is working fine for me thanks a lot Padow,as i used n option I can keep as many directory as I want cheers

Thanks

Can any body give me a script which should keep n(user defind) latest numbered directory (alpha numeric like 12345,3456)at any point of time,my script works for all files,need to list only numbered files?

Thanks,