Deleting log directories of a particular timestamp in UNIX

Question

I want to delete directories that are five days old, based on the directory name, instead of unix timestamp. Let us assume that directories are created like test_2013-05-20-12:23:43 and so on.

I want to delete all directories that are 5 days older, i.e before the 16th.

Is this possible to do?

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered May 21 '13 at 06:25

0

If you are not specific with file name criteria use this

find /path/to/files* -mtime +5 -exec rm {} \;

Note that there are spaces between rm, {}, and \;

Explanation

The first argument is the path to the files. This can be a path, a directory, or a wildcard as in the example above. I would recommend using the full path, and make sure that you run the command without the exec rm to make sure you are getting the right results. The second argument, -mtime, is used to specify the number of days old that the file is. If you enter +5, it will find files older than 5 days. The third argument, -exec, allows you to pass in a command such as rm. The {} \; at the end is required to end the command.

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answered May 21 '13 at 06:25

Zigma

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It is showing error like find: paths must precede expression Usage: find [-H] [-L] [-P] [path...] [expression] – RAVITEJA SATYAVADA May 21 '13 at 09:54
find logTest/logTest_* -mtime +5 rm { } \; – RAVITEJA SATYAVADA May 21 '13 at 09:58
Thanks Zigma, But +5 means it is deleting 7 days past files instead of 5 days. – RAVITEJA SATYAVADA May 21 '13 at 14:23
The question said not to use mtime, but instead the directory name. – Toby Speight Jun 08 '15 at 16:16

gipi · Answer 2 · 2013-05-21T13:45:21.377

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It's a little tricky, first of all find out the unix epoch of 5 days ago

$ date --date='5 days ago' +%s
1368599762

and then you can parse each directory name, extract the time part, transform it in a unix epoch time and compare if are before that date; if yes delete it.

edited May 21 '13 at 13:45

answered May 21 '13 at 06:35

gipi

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 08 '15 at 16:25

If the filenames are using ISO-8601 formatting as in your example, it's fairly easy to just do a lexical comparison:

oldest=`date -d 'today -5 days' '+test_%F-%T'`
find "$log_dir" -name 'test_*' -print \
  | while read f; do test "$f" '>=' "$oldest" || rm "$f"; done

(untested; assumes filenames don't include newlines)

This is a great fringe-benefit of standardizing on ISO-8601. :-)

Deleting log directories of a particular timestamp in UNIX

3 Answers3