CODEWITHSUNDEEP
bashawk
The Nerdy Geek
The Nerdy Geek

Reputation: 392

Unable to delete files from terminal

I have a folder that contains database backups, but i want to automate it using cron to delete old backups.

so i created the following script

#Get the current year
YEAR=$(date +'%Y')

#Get the current month
MONTH=$(date +'%m')

#Delete data from previous months
deleteOldData() { ls /root/copy/dbbackup/smpp_credits/ | awk -F "-" -v m="$MONTH" '$2 < m' | xargs -d "\n" rm -rf ;}

#Delete data from previous years ( if any )
deletePrevYearData() { ls /root/copy/dbbackup/smpp_credits/ | awk -F "-" -v y="$YEAR" '$3 < y' | xargs -d "\n" rm -rf ;}

deleteOldData

deletePrevYearData

Executing ls /root/copy/dbbackup/smpp_credits/ | awk -F "-" -v m="$MONTH" '$2 < m' in the terminal works as expected, (it lists the required files). but upon appending | xargs -d "\n" rm -rf the code runs and returns without any output, and checking the directory reveals that the files are still there. By the way, this code is stored and executed from a .sh file

Upvotes: 0

Views: 46

Answers (2)

hhoke1
hhoke1

Reputation: 222

Parsing ls output is widely considered to be a bad idea. I would try a find command, which should be cleaner.

find /root/copy/dbbackup/smpp_credits/ -maxdepth 1 -mtime +365 -exec rm -rf {} \;

from here. You can use -mtime +30 for files that are older than one month.

Upvotes: 1

Charles Duffy
Charles Duffy

Reputation: 295687

Assuming GNU find and date, -newermt can be used to compare a file's modification time against a specific date given as an argument:

delete_older_than_date="$(date +'%Y-%m-01')"
find /root/copy/dbbackup/smpp_credits \
  -maxdepth 1 \
  -type f \
  '!' -newermt "$delete_older_than_date" \
  -exec rm -rf -- '{}' +

Upvotes: 1

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