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Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting find command with wildcard directory Post 302533067 by srini0603 on Wednesday 22nd of June 2011 04:44:42 PM
Old 06-22-2011
Quote:
Originally Posted by Corona688
If you'd only said "dozens" I'd have have suggested this in the first place, but this is dangerous when you have lots of files and folders. There's a limit to how many things one glob can find -- in some shells, no more than a page or two worth.

The version with two finds has no limit at all.

You're only deleting some of the files. If they're not empty, I doubt you really want them deleted.

You'll need to use the two-find version to do this anyway, since it'd be torturous to get the right directory in one find and use it only once. I'll use 0-9, a-f if that worked for you.

Code:
# Find all directories in .../PROD-* beginning with [0-9a-f]
find /Production/ST/st*/Outbound/Prod/PROD-* -type d -name '[0-9a-f]*' -print -name '*' -prune
while read DIR
do
        # Find files in "${DIR}/PGP", delete them if old enough
        find "${DIR}/PGP" -type f -mtime +2 | xargs -d '\n' echo rm
 
        # Remove these directories only if they're empty
        rmdir "${DIR}/PGP" && rmdir "${DIR}"
# the rmdir's will cause some error messages when they fail, redirect that to /dev/null
done 2> /dev/null

find | xargs rm will run 'rm file1 file2 file3 ...' where find -exec rm would run 'rm file1; rm file2 ; rm file3 ...' so xargs makes it much faster. The -d '\n' is to tell xargs to consider anything but newlines as part of the filename.

The 'echo' is just a test, to print filenames instead of deleting as a test. Remove it once you're sure it's doing what you wanted.
can you tell me a bit more about two finds?

so in my case do I have to give it as 0-9,a-z as it could be anything between 0-9 and a-z as the first letter of the folder. is there any restriction on the # of directories I can search using this wildcard?

also won't the rmdir "${DIR}" delete the full structure? I just need only till the 32 char folder deleted and the rest should be intact.

P.S:
I just confirmed that it will be 32 chars and it will be consistent? so can i use the ??? approach? would that be better?
 

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XARGS(1L)																 XARGS(1L)

NAME
xargs - build and execute command lines from standard input SYNOPSIS
xargs [-0prtx] [-e[eof-str]] [-i[replace-str]] [-l[max-lines]] [-n max-args] [-s max-chars] [-P max-procs] [--null] [--eof[=eof-str]] [--replace[=replace-str]] [--max-lines[=max-lines]] [--interactive] [--max-chars=max-chars] [--verbose] [--exit] [--max-procs=max-procs] [--max-args=max-args] [--no-run-if-empty] [--version] [--help] [command [initial-arguments]] DESCRIPTION
This manual page documents the GNU version of xargs. xargs reads arguments from the standard input, delimited by blanks (which can be pro- tected with double or single quotes or a backslash) or newlines, and executes the command (default is /bin/echo) one or more times with any initial-arguments followed by arguments read from standard input. Blank lines on the standard input are ignored. xargs exits with the following status: 0 if it succeeds 123 if any invocation of the command exited with status 1-125 124 if the command exited with status 255 125 if the command is killed by a signal 126 if the command cannot be run 127 if the command is not found 1 if some other error occurred. OPTIONS --null, -0 Input filenames are terminated by a null character instead of by whitespace, and the quotes and backslash are not special (every character is taken literally). Disables the end of file string, which is treated like any other argument. Useful when arguments might contain white space, quote marks, or backslashes. The GNU find -print0 option produces input suitable for this mode. --eof[=eof-str], -e[eof-str] Set the end of file string to eof-str. If the end of file string occurs as a line of input, the rest of the input is ignored. If eof-str is omitted, there is no end of file string. If this option is not given, the end of file string defaults to "_". --help Print a summary of the options to xargs and exit. --replace[=replace-str], -i[replace-str] Replace occurences of replace-str in the initial arguments with names read from standard input. Also, unquoted blanks do not termi- nate arguments. If replace-str is omitted, it defaults to "{}" (like for `find -exec'). Implies -x and -l 1. --max-lines[=max-lines], -l[max-lines] Use at most max-lines nonblank input lines per command line; max-lines defaults to 1 if omitted. Trailing blanks cause an input line to be logically continued on the next input line. Implies -x. --max-args=max-args, -n max-args Use at most max-args arguments per command line. Fewer than max-args arguments will be used if the size (see the -s option) is exceeded, unless the -x option is given, in which case xargs will exit. --interactive, -p Prompt the user about whether to run each command line and read a line from the terminal. Only run the command line if the response starts with `y' or `Y'. Implies -t. --no-run-if-empty, -r If the standard input does not contain any nonblanks, do not run the command. Normally, the command is run once even if there is no input. --max-chars=max-chars, -s max-chars Use at most max-chars characters per command line, including the command and initial arguments and the terminating nulls at the ends of the argument strings. The default is as large as possible, up to 20k characters. --verbose, -t Print the command line on the standard error output before executing it. --version Print the version number of xargs and exit. --exit, -x Exit if the size (see the -s option) is exceeded. --max-procs=max-procs, -P max-procs Run up to max-procs processes at a time; the default is 1. If max-procs is 0, xargs will run as many processes as possible at a time. Use the -n option with -P; otherwise chances are that only one exec will be done. SEE ALSO
find(1L), locate(1L), locatedb(5L), updatedb(1) Finding Files (on-line in Info, or printed) XARGS(1L)
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