Find commmand returning search path with the result set Post: 302948343

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Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers Find commmand returning search path with the result set Post 302948343 by kraljic on Monday 29th of June 2015 06:01:01 AM

06-29-2015

Registered User

Find commmand returning search path with the result set

OS Platform : Oracle Linux 6.5

We are creating a shell script to purge old log files . It uses find command with rm in it.

The syntax is

find <Path of Log Directory> -exec rm -fr {} \;

Example:

find /tmp/test3 -exec rm -fr {} \;

For rm command , we use -r option to remove directories because it is not just files we want to delete. We have to purge directories too. Because sometimes our application creates directories for certain type of issues. For example, when the application crashes, it creates a 'Core Dump' directory by which several files are clubbed together and placed in a coreDump directory . Example coreDump_29_June_2015_11_05_32.

But, I have noticed that, when we try to search for files and directories in the search path, find command is returning the search path too in the result set. For example , I am trying to find all files and directories within /tmp/test3 directory . But, find is returning "/tmp/test3" in the result set too (shown in red below )

Since find is falsely returning the search path itself, rm is trying to remove it. But, rm is trying to delete a directory called
"/tmp/test3" within /tmp/test3 . ie. rm /tmp/test3/tmp/test3 which doesn't exist. So, it is harmless. But, how can I prevent the find command from returning the search path itself (the line shown in red below).

Code:

$ mkdir test3
$
$
$ cd test3
$
$ pwd
/tmp/test3
$ touch abc{1,2,3}.txt
$

## BTW.. Following command will work even without -print option

$ find /tmp/test3 -print
/tmp/test3
/tmp/test3/abc2.txt
/tmp/test3/abc3.txt
/tmp/test3/abc1.txt

$ find /tmp/test3 -exec rm -f {} \;
rm: cannot remove `/tmp/test3': Is a directory
$
$ ls
$
$ ls -lt
total 0
$
$ find /tmp/test3 -exec rm -fr {} \;
find: `/tmp/test3': No such file or directory
$
$ ls
$
$ pwd
/tmp/test3

kraljic

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findrule

FINDRULE(1)						User Contributed Perl Documentation					       FINDRULE(1)

NAME

       findrule - command line wrapper to File::Find::Rule

USAGE

	 findrule [path...] [expression]

DESCRIPTION

       "findrule" mostly borrows the interface from GNU find(1) to provide a command-line interface onto the File::Find::Rule heirarchy of
       modules.

       The syntax for expressions is the rule name, preceded by a dash, followed by an optional argument.  If the argument is an opening
       parenthesis it is taken as a list of arguments, terminated by a closing parenthesis.

       Some examples:

	find -file -name ( foo bar )

       files named "foo" or "bar", below the current directory.

	find -file -name foo -bar

       files named "foo", that have pubs (for this is what our ficticious "bar" clause specifies), below the current directory.

	find -file -name ( -bar )

       files named "-bar", below the current directory.  In this case if we'd have omitted the parenthesis it would have parsed as a call to name
       with no arguments, followed by a call to -bar.

   Supported switches
       I'm very slack.	Please consult the File::Find::Rule manpage for now, and prepend - to the commands that you want.

   Extra bonus switches
       findrule automatically loads all of your installed File::Find::Rule::* extension modules, so check the documentation to see what those
       would be.

AUTHOR

       Richard Clamp <richardc@unixbeard.net> from a suggestion by Tatsuhiko Miyagawa

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright (C) 2002 Richard Clamp.  All Rights Reserved.

       This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

SEE ALSO

       File::Find::Rule

perl v5.18.2							    2011-09-19							       FINDRULE(1)