Removing old fies from a directory

[Geoff Fahl]

Hello, I'm writing a script to remove files from a directory more than 30 days old, matching a certain pattern (*name*) without removing from subvols.

I am far enough that it finds the old files by name (using find) and writes them to a file. When I loop through the file and read it, it executes every line instead of performing a move of it.

Any ideas?

Thanks
Geoff


Here is the read and copy section of my code. Note: once this works it will be changed to a move

# Read logfile, get file basename (no dir) and move to output file loc
while read -u3 oldfile
do
oldbase=basename $oldfile
cp $oldfile $outdir/$oldbase
done 3<oldpaths.log

[likwid]

You can move files older than 30 days with one command:

find / -name whatever -ctime +30 -exec mv {} /newdir/ \;

So there's really no need to do file i/o, unless you need a log.

And if by old, you mean modification time change ctime to mtime. Or atime for access.

[likwid]

That might not be what you're looking for but I am a little unclear as to what you mean by "subvols."

[Geoff Fahl]

I don't want the find to be recursive. I only want it to move files in the directory I specify.

Thanks,
Geoff

[likwid]

find / -name whatever -maxdepth 1 -ctime +30 -exec mv {} /newdir/ \;

I think that should do it.

[Geoff Fahl]

The version of find I have doesn't support the -maxdepth arg. it also doesn't have -path.

[likwid]

Then troll through the man pages. I am using GNU find.

[vsemaska]

Then try -prune:

find * -prune -type f -name <whatever> -ctime +30 -exec mv {} /newdir/ \;

[thedondj]

I think your script would work if you changed

  oldbase=basename $oldfile

to

  oldbase=$(basename $oldfile)

The first way will create an environment in which oldbase=basename then run the file at the path stored in $oldfile, like the env command.

The second way will execute basename on oldfile and store the result in oldbase.