Unable to Delete Directories Older Than Three Days

Question

I need to delete all sub-directories that are older than three days. The below code should work but it isn't...

for i in `find ~/web/smsng/ -maxdepth 1 -type d -mtime +3 -print`; do echo -e "Deleting directory $i";rm -rf $i; done

Full ls-l listing of directory:

(uiserver):u83749873:~/models/ndfd > ls -l
total 1536
drwx---r-x 2 u83749873 ftpusers 12288 Apr  8 12:41 2016040816
drwx---r-x 2 u83749873 ftpusers 12288 Apr  8 13:41 2016040817
drwx---r-x 2 u83749873 ftpusers 12288 Apr  8 14:40 2016040818
drwx---r-x 2 u83749873 ftpusers 12288 Apr  8 15:41 2016040819
drwx---r-x 2 u83749873 ftpusers 12288 Apr  9 00:41 2016040904
drwx---r-x 2 u83749873 ftpusers 12288 Apr  9 01:41 2016040905
drwx---r-x 2 u83749873 ftpusers 12288 Apr  9 02:41 2016040906
drwx---r-x 2 u83749873 ftpusers 12288 Apr  10 03:41 2016040907
drwx---r-x 2 u83749873 ftpusers 12288 Apr  10 04:41 2016040907
drwx---r-x 2 u83749873 ftpusers 12288 Apr  11 07:41 2016040907

Why not look up the manual page for `find` and note the `exec` the option — Ed Heal, Apr 12 '16 at 16:32
Can you give us a full directory listing of `~/web/smsng/` (use ls -l)? Keep in mind that directories count as `modified` when the filenames change. — amphetamachine, Apr 12 '16 at 16:33
@EdHeal This code should work just fine as long as there are no spaces or escape characters in the path names. — amphetamachine, Apr 12 '16 at 16:34
@AaronPerry I said give me a listing. As in list the contents of the directory. i.e. `ls -l ~/web/smsng/`. You can put it in your question body. — amphetamachine, Apr 12 '16 at 16:35
Based on the directory listing, your code works fine; there *are* no directories older than four days. — amphetamachine, Apr 12 '16 at 16:39
So, if I wanted only the last three days, I would change `-mtime +3` to `-mtime +2`? — Aaron Perry, Apr 12 '16 at 16:41

amphetamachine · Accepted Answer · 2016-04-12T16:52:29.787

Change -mtime +3 to -mtime +2:

for i in `find ~/web/smsng/ -maxdepth 1 -type d -mtime +2 -print`; do
    echo -e "Deleting directory $i"
    rm -rf $i
done

According to the find(1) man page:

-mtime n

File was last accessed n*24 hours ago. When find figures out how many 24-hour periods ago the file was last accessed, any fractional part is ignored, so to match -atime +1, a file has to have been accessed at least two days ago.

Other improvements

There are some improvements you could make to your script to improve hardiness with regard to being able to process any possible file name.

Currently, your script will fail to work if:

Any directory has a space, tab, or newline character in it
The $i variable starts with a hyphen (-)

You can fix both these issues if if you write the script like so:

find ~/web/smsng/ \
    -maxdepth 1 -type d -mtime +2 \
    -exec echo 'Deleting directory {}' \; \
    -exec rm -rf -- {} \;

Because it's never interpreted as an argument list by the shell, split-on-whitespace never happens. Because it's passed to rm with the option-terminating -- the filename can begin with a hyphen and not get interpreted as a flag to rm.

Unable to Delete Directories Older Than Three Days

1 Answers1

Other improvements