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Full Discussion: UNIX Script to clean files
Top Forums UNIX for Beginners Questions & Answers UNIX Script to clean files Post 303033053 by bakunin on Friday 29th of March 2019 07:12:03 AM
Old 03-29-2019
First off, welcome to the forum as well as the family of the most powerful OSes there is in the world. You will find that Unix - any Unix, including Linux - is a set of finely tuned tools, just like an orchestra is a set of highly trained musicians. Let the right conductor - you - step up and they will blow the audience away.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wert468
I need a script that would delete files which are more than "X" number of days old
Let us start right here, at your premise. In UNIX every file has not one but several timestamps. There is:

- creation time
- modification time
- access time

and they are all set independently. You open a text editor and write a new file. All three of these times are set. After some time you open the file in a text editor again and change something - only the modification time and the access time (because to change it you need to read it first) is changed. Some time after this you display the files contents - only the access time is updated.

Also notice that many files on a UNIX system are important or even vital even if they are NOT updated regularly. I.e. the configuration file for a web server is being read when the web server starts, so its access time may be 2 months past if it runs for 2 months. You still shouldn't delete it, though, if you want to be able to start the webserver again. (notice that UNIX systems running for months or even years is - unlike Windows systems - rather normal. I have actually customers complain to me if i want to restart their server once a year after some major OS update. "You restarted already last year, why now again?" - no, i do NOT exaggerate here, i heard, word for word, exactly this complaint. In the OS i work with the most - AIX, IBMs UNIX - it is even possible to do OS and kernel updates under load with no interruption of the service. For exactly these situations where customers complain about the necessity reboot once a year or every other year.)

On the other hand, UNIX systems do not have "drives" but only one (uniform treelike) filesystem. So you may identify one or several branches in this tree where you want to start the cleaning operation and leave alone all the others.

In light of this you might want to rethink and restate your goals and we can discuss what might be done then.

I hope this helps.

bakunin
 

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LEARN ABOUT OPENDARWIN

touch

TOUCH(1)						    BSD General Commands Manual 						  TOUCH(1)

NAME

     touch -- change file access and modification times

SYNOPSIS

     touch [-acfhm] [-r file] [-t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.SS]] file ...

DESCRIPTION

     The touch utility sets the modification and access times of files to the current time of day.  If the file doesn't exist, it is created with
     default permissions.

     The following options are available:

     -a      Change the access time of the file.  The modification time of the file is not changed unless the -m flag is also specified.

     -c      Do not create the file if it does not exist.  The touch utility does not treat this as an error.  No error messages are displayed and
	     the exit value is not affected.

     -f      Attempt to force the update, even if the file permissions do not currently permit it.

     -h      If the file is a symbolic link, change the times of the link itself rather than the file that the link points to.	Note that -h
	     implies -c and thus will not create any new files.

     -m      Change the modification time of the file.	The access time of the file is not changed unless the -a flag is also specified.

     -r      Use the access and modifications times from the specified file instead of the current time of day.

     -t      Change the access and modification times to the specified time.  The argument should be in the form ``[[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.SS]'' where
	     each pair of letters represents the following:

		   CC	   The first two digits of the year (the century).
		   YY	   The second two digits of the year.  If ``YY'' is specified, but ``CC'' is not, a value for ``YY'' between 69 and 99
			   results in a ``CC'' value of 19.  Otherwise, a ``CC'' value of 20 is used.
		   MM	   The month of the year, from 1 to 12.
		   DD	   the day of the month, from 1 to 31.
		   hh	   The hour of the day, from 0 to 23.
		   mm	   The minute of the hour, from 0 to 59.
		   SS	   The second of the minute, from 0 to 61.

	     If the ``CC'' and ``YY'' letter pairs are not specified, the values default to the current year.  If the ``SS'' letter pair is not
	     specified, the value defaults to 0.

DIAGNOSTICS

     The touch utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

SEE ALSO

     utimes(2)

COMPATIBILITY

     The obsolescent form of touch, where a time format is specified as the first argument, is supported.  When no -r or -t option is specified,
     there are at least two arguments, and the first argument is a string of digits either eight or ten characters in length, the first argument
     is interpreted as a time specification of the form ``MMDDhhmm[YY]''.

     The ``MM'', ``DD'', ``hh'' and ``mm'' letter pairs are treated as their counterparts specified to the -t option.  If the ``YY'' letter pair
     is in the range 39 to 99, the year is set to 1939 to 1999, otherwise, the year is set in the 21st century.

HISTORY

     A touch utility appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX.

STANDARDS

     The touch utility is expected to be a superset of the IEEE Std 1003.2 (``POSIX.2'') specification.

BSD
								  April 28, 1995							       BSD
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