CODEWITHSUNDEEP
bashshellgnu-findutils
cristoferro061
cristoferro061

Reputation: 37

Remove empty files and save a list of deleted files

I need a script that removes all empty files and writes a list of deleted files to a text file.

Deleting files works. Unfortunately, the listing does not work.

find . -type f -empty -print -delete

I tried something like this:

-print >> test.txt

Upvotes: 1

Views: 683

Answers (2)

acfglmrsx
acfglmrsx

Reputation: 52

You can use -exec option with rm command instead of -delete.

find . -type f -emtpy -exec rm --verbose {} \; >> logfile.txt

logfile.txt:

removed './emptyfile1'
removed './emptyfile0'

Or you can use pipes and xargs for a more clean output:

find . -type f -empty | xargs ls | tee -a logfile.txt | xargs rm

This will give you only deleted filenames.

Upvotes: 2

joanis
joanis

Reputation: 12221

When I redirect the output of your command to a file in ., it gets delete by the find command before anything is written to it, since it is empty.

To solve this, make sure the output file is not empty at the beginning, or save it elsewhere:

find . -type f -empty -print -delete > ../log

or

date > log
find . -type f -empty -print -delete >> log

or, adapted from @DanielFarrell's comment:

find . -type f -empty -a -not -wholename ./log  -print -delete > log

The added -a -not -wholename ./log excludes ./log from the find operation.

Upvotes: 5

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