UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I have to read a complete folder and if it is a file older that 7 days I have to copy it elsewhere and if it is a folder nothing to make.

The way I do it:
for I in `find /home/. -name "*" -mtime +7`
do
cp -Rf $I /home/elsewhere/.
done

Am I okay with the way I want to do it?

Help please?!?!

Denys

Denys,

You can simplify this in a couple of ways.

1) Use the type switch for 'find' command - to limit your results to files - not dirs or anything else
-type f

2) Use an exec at the end of find to automatically cp for you without the 'for' loop

3) Remove the -name "*" , which is redundant - it is adding a filter with no limitations.


Try this as a solution:

find /home/. -mtime +7 -type f -exec cp -Rf {} /home/elsewhere/ \;

Thanks. I tried that but I still have a problem. When I do the find command as you told me I have this error:
find: 0652-018 An expression term lacks a required parameter.

What can I do wrong?

Try stripping off the -exec part of the statement to see what the output is before we manipulate it.
execute
find /home -mtime +7 -type f