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Shell Programming and Scripting

file and directory deletion script

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# 1  
Old 06-29-2009
file and directory deletion script
I saw many post about this but could not find a specific answer to this question.

i have the following code

Code:
find . -depth  -name "$FILEEXT" -ctime -30 -exec rm {} \;

when i type ./deletefiles.sh *.txt for example, it will find all the txt files less than 30 days old and delete them.

my question is, what do i need to add to it to delete the directory ONLY if its EMPTY too... thannks
# 2  
Old 06-29-2009
Lazy version, use rmdir. It works only if dir is empty.
Code:
find . -type d    ....  -exec rmdir {} \;

# 3  
Old 06-29-2009
where would i put that
Where would I put that?
# 4  
Old 06-29-2009
after your file find + rm
1st find remove files = your find cmd
2nd find remove empty directory ... = if you like to add some other options.
find . -type d -exec rmdir {} \;
# - remove empty dirs
In the script usually rm, mv, ... use -f option = and I mean it = force
rm -f {} \;
# 5  
Old 06-29-2009
results
Code:
FILEEXT=$1

find .  -depth  -name "$FILEEXT" -ctime -30  -exec rm -f {} \;
find  -type d -ctime -30 -exec rmdir {}   \;





$ ./deletefiles.sh *txt
rmdir: `.': Invalid argument
rmdir: `./testfiles': Directory not empty
find: ./testfiles/folder1: No such file or directory

it removed the file and folder but i got those errors, i dont want those, what can i do
# 6  
Old 06-30-2009
Quote:
it removed the file and folder but i got those errors, i dont want those, what can i do
Redirect stderr to nowehere:
Code:
FILEEXT=$1
exec 2>/dev/null

find .  -depth  -name "$FILEEXT" -ctime -30  -exec rm -f {} \;
find  -type d -ctime -30 -exec rmdir {}   \;

oh and you should get better performance by piping to exargs instead of exec rm, and GNU's find has an "-empty" test that will evaluate to true if the directory is empty. This leaves the situation where a directory contains only directories to be removed, in which case GNU's rmdir has a -p option that might prove useful.
Code:
find .  -depth  -name "$FILEEXT" -ctime -30  -print |xargs rm -f
find  -type d -empty -ctime -30 -print |xargs rmdir -p

# 7  
Old 06-30-2009
its works..... but
it works, but when i get rid of the argument exec 2>/dev/null , i still get rmdir to few errors and when its deletes an entire folder i get rmdir '.' : invald argument, is there anything i can do so i dont get these errors, or shall i just have them pipe to no where
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