UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi folks,

I am DBA who needs some help with find command. We have a directory with files dated from January 1, 2001. Several files are created each day. We probably have several hundred files. I want to delete all files OLDER than 90 days (I want to keep files that are 90 days before today & delete everything older than that). I tried this:

find . +mtime 90 -exec rm |


I am missing something here. Could you folks help me out? Thanks.

find . -type f -mtime +90 -exec rm {} \;

I would recommend moving or copying them elsewhere first before removing them - but this will do you what you want

Regards.

hi.

i think you have got an error, haven't you?

the syntax is:

find . -type f +mtime 90 -exec rm {} \;

but i think it is better you mave this things, or copy it first to another location.

find . +mtime 90 -print | xargs cp -R /savedir

cheers, alex...

No, the syntax is correct and works fine for me - in addition srolen wants files not only 90 days old, but files 90 days old and OLDER and hence +90 is needed. It is an "-" before the mtime, just like all other condition statement flags that work with find.

However you have introduced a more efficient means of doing this using xargs since -exec spawns a new process for each file it finds, whereas the former collects the files as multiple arguments to the rm (or whatever else) command.

Regards.