CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxshelldate
Kshitiz
Kshitiz

Reputation: 35

Store the date (timestamp) of the oldest file from a directory in Linux in a variable (shell script)

I am trying to find the date of the oldest log file that's at least 10 days old underneath the /home/ directory. 

find /home -type f –name "*.log" –mtime +10 -ls | sort | head - n 1 >>/home/text.txt

Am using +10 since I need to find the date after 10 days period.

startDate = cut –d '_' –f20,22 text.txt to get the date.

But this code is not working correctly. Any suggestions please?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 755

Answers (2)

clt60
clt60

Reputation: 63902

You can try the next:

oldest=$(stat -f "%m%t%Sm %N" /home/**/*.log | sort -n | head -1 | cut -f2)

or

oldest10=$(find /home/ -type f –name “*.log” –mtime +10 -print0 | xargs -0 stat -f "%m%t%Sm" | sort -n | head -1 | cut -f2)

Explanation:

  • find finds the right files
  • stat prints the date in format "seconds TAB date"
  • sort sorts by seconds (numerically) - lowest number (seconds) first (so it is the oldest)
  • head get the first line (oldest)
  • cut removes the seconds field.

if you have GNU find, you can use the -printf to get the "seconds TAB date" and not need to use the xargs and stat commands, e.g:

find arguments -printf "%T@\t%c\n" | sort -n | head -1 | cut -f2

Upvotes: 1

David C. Rankin
David C. Rankin

Reputation: 84551

It appears what you want to do is use find to locate the oldest log file over 10 days old below the /home/ directory. If that is your goal, then you can use a find command similar to:

find /home -type f -name "*.log" -mtime +10 -printf "%TY%Tm%Td%TH%TM%TS %p\n" | \
sort | head -n 1 >> /home/text.txt

The output before the head command will be a list of files found sorted in ascending order as follows (shown with "*.c" pattern):

20140621130603.9932529560 ./fill8bit.c
20140623130713.1503117800 ./strtol2.c
20140623133243.9487796380 ./strtol1.c
20140623215536.9085778830 ./mpg.c
...

The head -n1 simply takes the first. That being:

20140621130603.9932529560 ./fill8bit.c

Upvotes: 0

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