CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linux
user3602567
user3602567

Reputation: 11

cronjob to remove files older than N days with special characters

I'm trying to create a job to delete files on a linux box older than X days. Pretty straightforward with:

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

Problem is all my files have special characters b/c they are pictures from a webcam - most contain parenthesis so the above command fails with "no such file or directory".

Upvotes: 0

Views: 561

Answers (2)

mpez0
mpez0

Reputation: 2883

Does

find /path/to/files -mtime +X -print | tr '()' '?' | xargs rm -f

work?

Upvotes: 0

Giacomo1968
Giacomo1968

Reputation: 26066

Have you tried this:

find /path/to/files -mtime +X -exec rm '{}' \;

Or perhaps:

rm $(find /path/to/files -mtime +X);

Or even this method using xargs instead of -exec:

find /path/to/files -mtime +X | xargs rm -f;

Another twist on xargs is to use -print0 which will help the script differentiate between spaces in filenames & spaces between the returned list by using the ASCII null character as a file separator:

find /path/to/files -mtime +X -print0 | xargs -0 rm -f;

Or as man find explains under -print0:

This primary always evaluates to true.  It prints the pathname of
the current file to standard output, followed by an ASCII NUL
character (character code 0).

I would also recommend adding the -maxdepth and -type flags to better control what the script does. So I would use this for a dry-run test:

find /path/to/files -maxdepth 1 -type f -mtime +1 -exec echo '{}' \;

The -maxdepth flag controls how many directories down the find will execute and -type will limit the search to files (aka: f) so the script is focused on files only. This will simply echo the results. Then when you are comfortable with it, change the echo to rm.

Upvotes: 1

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