It lets you break one long line across several lines to make it easier to read and edit. It's the same as if it'd been crammed all onto one big line.

For example,

Code:

$ echo a \
b \
c

a b c 

$

When you run it, it should print things like rm file1 file2 file3 file4 ... to the screen.

It's not running rm file1 file2 file file4, it's running echo rm file1 file2 file3 file4 which prints to the screen.

No, that line is important, it tells it what to do. Because with the echo, it will run echo rm filename, printing filenames to the screen for you to check if it's finding the right files.

Once you remove the echo, it will be running rm filename, and actually trying to remove the files.

Code:

PATH_ROOT="/ot/bean/923/domains/scape"

find    "$PATH_ROOT/servers/scape-admin/logs/"             \
        "$PATH_ROOT/servers/scape-services-ru/logs/"       \
        "$PATH_ROOT/servers/scape-services/logs/"          \
        "$PATH_ROOT/servers/scape-gui/logs/"               \
        "$PATH_ROOT/servers/scape-gui-ru/logs/"            \
        -name '*.log*' -mtime +7 -exec echo rm '{}' '+'