UNIX Desktop Questions & Answers

i seriously do not recommend using "find" for this problem, as (as you know) it searches recursively...
i prefer the straightforward approach:

Code:

ls -l | grep "May 15" | awk '{print $9;}' | tee /tmp/log

once i'm happy with that output:

Code:

/bin/rm `cat /tmp/log`

This is using some of the ideas also offered above. Primarily, the idea that you are able to check your work (multiple times) before running the final 'rm' command.

oh... and you can add "| grep -v ^d" in that pipeline to avoid grabbing directories.

I seriously recommend against recommending to not use find for this task .

find does not have to recurse into subdirectories if that is not desired. On GNU/Linux and *BSD systems, all finds support -maxdepth n. On systems that do not support that primary, the following gets the job done:

Code:

find "$path" ! -name "$path" -prune ...

Your "straightforward approach" is actually more complicated, brittle, and error prone. In addition to all the reasons mentioned by agama in post #6, filenames with whitespace will not make it through intact.

grep/awk are misc text processing tools. find's primaries know what they're looking at. In my opinion, find is the right tool for the job.

Regards,
Alister