Hi All,

I trying to get my head around using the find command and i wanted to list a selection of files that are older than 30 days. i used 'find . -mtime +30' and it lists all the files including other files from the current location's sub directory. i then used the prune option but it seems it doesn't work 'find . -mtime +30 -prune'. The location i am trying to find files is in my local directory

/local/home/***/print/

the directory print has sub directory called 'backup'.

any help kindly appreciated.

Mani

Add the "-level 0" option to the command

Try:
find . -prune -mtime +30

I may have read the posting incorrectly, but if you are attempting to exclude the the backup and/or print subdirectory and operate only on the the rest of the home, then:

find /local/home/username -name print -prune -o -mtime +30 -ls

mutliple prunes if you want (spaces important)

find /local/home/username \( -name print -o -name dir2 -o -name dir3 \) -prune -o -mtime +30 -print

-David

hi, thanks for all your replies.

dmwaff, apologies for any misunderstanding, what i wanted was to find the contents 30+ days old only in the print directory and not its subdirectory "backup"

i tried :

find /local/home/*username*/print/ -name print -prune -o -mtime +30

and it returns everything 30+ days old in 'print' and in the sub directory 'backup'.

i tried:

find . -prune -mtime +30

and it doesn't return anything even with a -ls option at the end.


i went back one directory into my username directory and tried the following commands

find . -name 'print' -mtime +30
find ./ -name print -mtime +30

but nothing, no display or error message of incorrect usage even with an -ls or -prune option. I did a check on the contents of the directory and there are files dating back from 2006, from May and June 2007, which it should pick up and display

To find files (not directories) in the current directory old than 30 days without descending into subdirectories, use:
find . ! -name . -prune -type f -mtime +30

If you want to find old directories too without descending into them:
find . ! -name . -prune -mtime +30