UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

dear all,
i m a newbie and i want to delete all files of a particular date,how can i do this? your help appreciated,thanks in advance.

OS:RHEL 6

Read the man page of the find command, especially the parts about -ctime, -atime and -mtime. Use -print to display the files and double-check they are the ones you want to remove, then replace -print with -exec rm {} \; (yes, the semicolon is part of the command) to delete the files found that way.

A short introduction to how find works can be found here.

I hope this helps.

bakunin

bakunin thanks for replying me,i already saw that find command and in find command we use number of day like -mtime 7,-ctime +5 to delete files created 7 and 5 days ago . is there any command in which we can mention a particular date eg 28sep to delete all files created on sep 28?

Yes, find can compare file dates (see the -newer clause, for instance). You can create a "template file" with a suitable date by using the touch command (see man touch) and use this file in a subsequent find.

I hope this helps.

bakunin

Yes, find can compare file dates (see the -newer clause, for instance). You can create a "template file" with a suitable date by using the touch command (see man touch ) and use this file in a subsequent find .


hi bakunin,whatever you are telling (shown above) can you please explain the steps with an example ? thanks in advance.

I asked you to read the man page of find and especially about the -newer clause. To quote from the man page:

Quote:

-newer file
File was modified more recently than file.

Now use the touch command to prepare such a reference file with a time stamp at the start of the interval you want to find files in: your date, time 00:00. Issue man touch to find out how this is done.

After you have created this file you can issue

Code:

find /start/directory -newer /your/reference/file -print

to find all the files modified more recently than this reference file. This means all the files you want but also newer ones, from dates more recent than the one you are interested in. To limit your result to the certain date create a second reference file (the same way you created the first, see above) with the time stamp set to your date, time 23:59. Now use a second -newer clause with this file as reference, but this time negated (see the ! operator, which reverses tests in find).

The only files found this way are now the ones which are newer than your-day, 00:00 AND not newer (=older) than your-day, 23:59, which is what you wanted. You can safely remove the two reference files after finds run.

I suggest you play around a bit with the commands of find to get used to it. Use the -print (or -print0) clause, so that the files found only are displayed instead of deleted or otherwise affected.

I hope this helps.

bakunin