keep last file from moving

[horent135]

Say i have files of test1, test2, test3, test4... and so on...
and all the test are 10 days old or older. But i want to keep the last test from moving into another directory.

find old_dir/ -type f -name "*test" -mtime +10 -exec mv '{}' new_dir/ \;
that moves all the test into another directory. but...
is there a way to keep the last test from moving? basically i want to keep the most recent test from moving.

[ghostdog74]

find old_dir/ -type f -name "*test" -mtime +10 | head -n -1 | xargs -i mv '{}' new_dir

[horent135]

Thanks again,helped very much!

[scm]

This works provided the most recent file is the last one that find finds, which may not be the case if files are deleted and the gaps reused (though I'm not sure exactly how Linux filesystems organise their directories). To avoid this, I'd use something like:

ls -rt $(find old_dir/ -type f -name "*test" -mtime +10) | head -n -1 | xargs -i mv '{}' new_dir

which should guarantee the newest file name is the last output.

[horent135]

the code above works if it put test from 1-8. but if put it backwards like 8-1, and 1 is the most recent file, 8 stays but 1 moves.

[scm]

That's why my solution uses ls to order the files by reverse time (-rt), not alphabetically.