UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi All,

Ok, so I'm fairly new to Unix, but would like to think I'm grasping things fairly ok (Well until now ), BUT with this one I'm going in circles ... LOL .. really can't work out why? So sorry for this post if it seems a little "dumb" .. But here goes.

In short I'd like to achieve the "removal" of files based on a text list.

example, if I had a file called "delete.txt" it would consist of ONLY file names of what should be deleted.

These files would be found below a PATH and that's where I'm pointing find to.

I've been trying all variations of:

Code:

if [ -f $DELETE ] ;then
cat $DELETE | while read file; do find $HOME -name "$file" -exec rm -rf {} \;
done
mv -f $UPDATE/inbox/delete.txt $UPDATE/trash
fi

I've also been trying with xargs (But when my "delete.txt" file typically has spaces in it won't work .. I've tried using find with < $DELETE but also no luck. What's really strange is I'm sure it worked once or twice, but now haven't been able to get it working again. ANY help will be greatly appreciated. (And yes I see there are a few posts already in the forum, but apologiese, that's exactely what I've been trying with no luck - Sorry)

Hope to chat soon and thanks in advance

Regards
Dean

I see no reasons for you script (please encode it with code tags) not to work. Can you explain where you see it failing ?

Hi Jlliagre,

Thanks for your reply, as I say, to me it should also work 100%, but it's not .. I'm not sure if perhaps it's based on the rest of the script below happening before the deletes happened as such, ie would it be possible that the mv command below "done" could be happening before it has chance to read the file? .. I also thought that file perms could be a problem, but this shouldn't be the case as the files are chmod 777 and the script is being run by cron as root.

Can I ask what you mean by encode it with tags? .. Would you like me to past the complete script?

Thanks and chat soon

Is that a semi-colon between the if condition and "Then" ? Do you need that ?

Hi Shababc,

Yip, there is a semi colon there ( should that not be the case? The exact code is:

Code:

if [ -f $DELETE ] ;then
cat $DELETE | while read file; do find $HOME -name "$file" -exec rm -f {} \;
done
mv -f $UPDATE/inbox/delete.txt $UPDATE/trash
fi

Thanks and hope we can find out why this isn't working ... I'll try without the semi colon, but I have similar "if's" ALL with the space ;then in place so not sure?

Chat soon
Dean

The second version is nearly there. It uses "rm -f" (files) rather than "rm -rf" (directories), but will still not deal with filenames containing spaces.

You need double quotes round the curly braces to preserve spaces.

Test with "echo" not real "rm" then remove the echo when you are happy.

Code:

if [ -f $DELETE ] ;then
cat $DELETE | while read file; do find $HOME -name "$file" -exec echo rm -f "{}" \;
done
mv -f $UPDATE/inbox/delete.txt $UPDATE/trash
fi

Heyo Methyl,

Thank You .. Brilliant ... I'll give this a try and see how it goes .. Really appreciate the help

Dean