Shell Programming and Scripting

Can I ask a question not related to original question. I have this below command running on a directory which contains thousands of files. This command runs for 5 minutes. Any files received in folder1 during the execution of command is getting moved, even though that file is just received and it's not 7 days old as required in command.

Code:

find /folder1 -type f ! -mtime -7 -exec mv {} /folder2 \;

Moderator's Comments:

No. Please do not hijack a thread by posting a new topic in an existing thread. Create a new thread for a new topic. I have moved this post into a new thread for you this time.

You haven't asked to move files that are exactly 7 days old; you have asked to move files that are less than 7 days old.

Thanks. I am new user. I am learning. I couldn't find a way to create a new topic.
I know -mtime -7 means less than 7 days old, but there is a ! which actually inverts the sign. This is weird. But that's the way someone wrote that code in my organization few years back.
Thanks again.

Moderator's Comments:

In the middle of the Home page for the UNIX & Linux Forums you'll see a list of the available sub-forums. Select the sub-forum in which you want to create your new thread. Then there will be a "New Thread" button under the bottom left corner of the box at the top of the page containing that sub-forum's name. Click on that button to create your new thread.

Sorry, I didn't notice the ! in ! -mtime -7. That would mean 7 or more days old (not just 7 days old) which could also be written as -mtime +6.

The standards state:
but that does not give an implementation the right to include a new file in the search and ignore the selection criteria. The behavior you're describing sounds like a bug in find on your system.

Thanks Don for your response..
I did a test. I started a program which writes lots of data in a file and it takes some time. While the file is still being written and not been committed, i did istat on that file, it shows modified time as -----. I guess that Find command is not able to calculate time on junk like --- and it faults.

When a file is created, its last data access timestamp, last data modification timestamp, and last status change timestamp are all marked for update. Any timestamps marked for update are required by the standards to be updated before a successful completion of any of the following functions/system calls on that file: fstat(), fstatat(), fsync(), futimens(), lstat(), stat(), utime(), utimensat(), or utimes().

While it would theoretically be possible for the istat and find utilities to read the i-nodes for the files they are processing directly from the disks on which the filesystems are located, any sane utility writer would use fstat() after getting the file's name from reading the directory being processed. And, since the fstat() is required to update the timestamps before returning the status information to the caller, what you are seeing from istat should not happen on a system that conforms to the standards. (Note, however, that some filesystems have options that can be used when they are mounted that make the filesystems "more responsive" by ignoring standard requirements. If the filesystem you're working in was mounted with one of these options, you might want to ask your system administrator to change the mount options used so your code will work correctly instead of working incorrectly slightly faster.)

Yes it looks like an exotic file system type or an exotic mount option.
To find out the fs type do

Code:

df /folder1

and its mount options are

Code:

mount -v | grep <fs type>