How to use ls command output in rm for a particular directory

Question

I want to delete oldest files in a directory when the number of files is greater than 5. I'm using

(ls -1t | tail -n 3)

to get the oldest 3 files in the directory. This works exactly as I want. Now I want to delete them in a single command with rm. As I'm running these commands on a Linux server, cd into the directory and deleting is not working so I need to use either find or ls with rm and delete the oldest 3 files. Please help out. Thanks :)

_cd into the directory and deleting is not working_ - how's that? `ls -1t` also only operates on the current directory, so since that works, it must already be in the right directory. — Armali, Mar 29 '16 at 12:58

Neil Masson · Answer 1 · 2016-01-21T09:06:36.427

2

If you want to delete files from some arbitrary directory, then pass the directory name into the ls command. The default is to use the current directory.

Then use $() parameter expansion to transfer the result of tail into rm like this

rm $(ls -1t dirname| tail -n 3)

edited Jan 21 '16 at 09:06

answered Jan 20 '16 at 15:15

Neil Masson

2,609
1
15
23

I want to delete in a a particular directory, can't I pass directory name to the rm cmd? some like : `rm $(ls -1t | tail -n 3)` – user2340345 Jan 21 '16 at 04:50
if i use cd && rm $(ls -1t | tail -n 3), then it says no such directory. They're zip files and its not getting deleted. – user2340345 Jan 21 '16 at 05:04
I have updated the answer so that you can delete files from any directory. – Neil Masson Jan 21 '16 at 09:07
what would happen if `ls` returns `No such file or directory` – alper Nov 03 '21 at 13:01

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 20 '16 at 15:17

0

rm $(ls -1t | tail -n 3) 2> /dev/null

answered Jan 20 '16 at 15:17

mitghi

889
7
20

Why do you redirect the *stderr*? Why not `rm -f`? – Basile Starynkevitch Jan 21 '16 at 09:10

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 03 '21 at 13:22

ls may return No such file or directory error message, which may cause rm to run unnessesary with that value.

With the help of following answer: find - suppress "No such file or directory" errors and https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/140647/198423

find $dirname -type d -exec ls -1t {} + | tail -n 3 | xargs rm -rf

How to use ls command output in rm for a particular directory

3 Answers3