find: missing argument to `-exec`

Question

I'm trying to get my Shell script working, but I keep getting: find: missing argument to '-exec'

#!/bin/sh
echo Hello World
find ./public_html/var/session/ -type f -name "sess*" -mtime +30 -exec rm -f {} \;
echo DONE

I've been trying to find help in these solutions but sadly none of them have solved my problem.
Shell script - find: missing argument to `-exec'
find: missing argument to -exec

I've now deleted it and retyped it all myself, still the same. — Carsten Løvbo Andersen, Nov 26 '19 at 15:16
Check with `xxd` instead of retyping. Don't you have a MSWin line end after `\;`? — choroba, Nov 26 '19 at 15:18
@choroba I'm sorry but I have no clue how to check that. I'm just trying to make a script that will clean up the files on our Magento server. — Carsten Løvbo Andersen, Nov 26 '19 at 15:24
Run `xxd script.sh` and check that the space corresponds to `20` and the newline to `0a`. — choroba, Nov 26 '19 at 15:26
instead, you can - `find ./public_html/var/session/ -type f -name "sess*" -mtime +30 | xargs rm -f` — brokenfoot, Nov 26 '19 at 15:47
Your script almost certainly is using DOS line endings, which means the last argument isn't `\;`, but `\;`. — chepner, Nov 26 '19 at 17:21
@brokenfoot Thanks that worked just perfect, If you add an answer ill accept it. — Carsten Løvbo Andersen, Nov 27 '19 at 06:58
Using `-exec` is preferable to piping to `xargs` for a number of reasons. Did you check if DOS line endings was causing the problem? — chepner, Nov 29 '19 at 02:46

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 27 '19 at 16:42

1

Another option not involving -exec is to pipe the result to xargs and then rm on it:

find ./public_html/var/session/ -type f -name "sess*" -mtime +30 | xargs rm -f

Note: xargs supports executing in parallel with -P command, see man page.

answered Nov 27 '19 at 16:42

brokenfoot

1 Answers1