I'm trying to figure out how to build a small shell script that will find old .shtml files in every /tgp/ directory on the server and delete them if they are older than 10 days...

The structure of the paths are like this:
/home/domains/www.domain2.com/tgp/
/home/domains/www.domain3.com/tgp/
/home/domains/www.domain4.com/tgp/
/home/domains/www.domain5.com/tgp/

So I've got 220 domains on this one box and in each of those domains I've got a directory called /tgp/ ...in /tgp/ directory I have hundreds of old .shtml files that I need to delete.

If I use this command will it work or will it cause any damage?

find /tgp -mtime +10 -name "*.shtml" -exec rm

If this is not the best way to do this, which way should I handle this and what command could take care of this?

You are on the right track. However two things:


(1) Suggest you use the <B>-regex</B> switch of find for pattern matches (and not the -name switch with wildcards). That is how I do it, using regular expressions.

(2) Suggest you execute/test your <B>-exec</B> switch with mv (move) to a temporary directory before executing rm (remove) to insure things work as planned This is always a good practice, regardless of the level of skill and confidence. Moving files to a temporary directory before deleting has a lot of benefits, most of all, you will not ruin your day with a typo or other mistake!!