BTW this command worked for me- rm {path}/*[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9].txt
Is there a shorter way? Because as per need we could extend this to
delete all .txt files ending with exactly 10 digits.
--We need to delete files having names like abc12345, ac12456, abcd98653 and so on..
This cmd finds and rm's files with the filename pattern [any number of digits].txt in linux:
find /path/to/search -type f -regextype posix-extended -regex '^.*/[0-9]+\.txt' -exec rm -f {} \;
And this one rm's files with exactly 10 digits.
find /path/to/search -type f -regextype posix-extended -regex '^.*/[0-9]{10}\.txt' -exec rm -f {} \;
Try it without the "-exec rm -f {} \;" bit first to see if it matches the correct files to delete
Related
I'm trying to work out a command which deletes sql files older than 15 days.
The find part is working but not the rm.
rm -f | find -L /usr/www2/bar/htdocs/foo/rsync/httpdocs/db_backups -type f \( -name '*.sql' \) -mtime +15
It kicks out a list of exactly the files I want deleted but is not deleting them. The paths are correct.
usage: rm [-f | -i] [-dIPRrvW] file ...
unlink file
/usr/www2/bar/htdocs/foo/rsync/httpdocs/db_backups/20120601.backup.sql
...
/usr/www2/bar/htdocs/foo/rsync/httpdocs/db_backups/20120610.backup.sql
What am I doing wrong?
You are actually piping rm's output to the input of find. What you want is to use the output of find as arguments to rm:
find -type f -name '*.sql' -mtime +15 | xargs rm
xargs is the command that "converts" its standard input into arguments of another program, or, as they more accurately put it on the man page,
build and execute command lines from standard input
Note that if file names can contain whitespace characters, you should correct for that:
find -type f -name '*.sql' -mtime +15 -print0 | xargs -0 rm
But actually, find has a shortcut for this: the -delete option:
find -type f -name '*.sql' -mtime +15 -delete
Please be aware of the following warnings in man find:
Warnings: Don't forget that the find command line is evaluated
as an expression, so putting -delete first will make find try to
delete everything below the starting points you specified. When
testing a find command line that you later intend to use with
-delete, you should explicitly specify -depth in order to avoid
later surprises. Because -delete implies -depth, you cannot
usefully use -prune and -delete together.
P.S. Note that piping directly to rm isn't an option, because rm doesn't expect filenames on standard input. What you are currently doing is piping them backwards.
find /usr/www/bar/htdocs -mtime +15 -exec rm {} \;
Will select files in /usr/www/bar/htdocs older than 15 days and remove them.
Another simpler method is to use locate command. Then, pipe the result to xargs.
For example,
locate file | xargs rm
Use xargs to pass arguments, with the option -rd '\n' to ignore spaces in names:
"${command}" | xargs -rd '\n' rm
Include --force if you want to also remove read only files.
Assuming you aren't in the directory containing the *.sql backup files:
find /usr/www2/bar/htdocs/foo/rsync/httpdocs/db_backups/*.sql -mtime +15 -exec rm -v {} \;
The -v option above is handy it will verbosely output which files are being deleted as they are removed.
I like to list the files that will be deleted first to be sure. E.g:
find /usr/www2/bar/htdocs/foo/rsync/httpdocs/db_backups/*.sql -mtime +15 -exec ls -lrth {} \;
I'd like to create a find which delete a files older than 30 days, but I have 1 directory where the retention should be 6 months.
How would that be possible?
This one would delete all files in all subdirectories which is older than 30 days if I'm correct.
/bin/find /root/script/* -type f -ctime +30 -exec rm {} \;
Bu how I can set that this directory needs different retention:
/root/script/owner
You can exclude the /root/script/owner from the find output using -path or -regex, combined with '!' to negate the test
find /root/script -type f -ctime +30 '!' -path '/root/script/owner/*' -exec rm {} \;
OR
find /root/script -type f -ctime +30 '!' -regex '/root/script/owner/.*' -exec rm {} \;
Then execute the custom delete on the special folder
find /root/script/owner -type f -ctime +180 -exec rm {} \;
You can combine multiple operators so that they restrict what is included. You actually already do this because you have a -type and -ctime, joined with an implicit AND.
The one you need to add is regex, and you can do something like:
/bin/find /root/script/* -type f ! -regex '/root/script/owner/.*' -ctime +30 -exec rm {} \;
This should exclude files in that particular tree since the ! -regex will be false for them. The basic idea is that only those that pass all the conditions will be subject to further operations.
In this case, any non-regular files will be excluded. Of the others, any that don't match the regex will be excluded. Of those remaining ones, we'll throw away any that don't match the 30-day requirement. Whatever's left will be actioned by the rm.
The remaining directory, of course, is done with the greater time:
/bin/find /root/script/owner -type f -ctime +186 -exec rm {} \;
I have to find all files whose name start with String + Number like below
ABC123_filedemo.txt
AB_451_filetxt
CD_789_demo.txt
demo_files_FD123.txt
d_files_re_SD_456.txt
I have tried this Command But Not working
export _date=`date "+%d_%m_%Y_%H_%M_%S"`
find . -type f -iname 'AB*' -exec mv {} /Demo_files"_"$_date \;
Is ".txt" relevant? Then try:
find ./ -regextype posix-extended -regex '.*[a-zA-Z]+.*[0-9]+\.txt' -exec <your stuff>
inspired by: https://stackoverflow.com/a/5249797/10514446
This looks like a simple example:
find ./ -name "[a-zA-Z]*[0-9]*"
Every file here needs to start with a letter 'a'-'z' (small or large caps) and somewhere in the filename you need a digit [0-9].
I am honestly nowhere near to be a decent bash scripter, but I made a little research and found a command that seems to be useful
find /path/to/files* -mtime +1 -exec rm {} \;
The question is if this line will remove directories? Because I want to only remove files that are images (actually in a *.jpeg format)
No, rm without the -r flag does not remove directories.
It looks like you want to add some more filters:
-type f to match only files
-name '*.jpeg' to match only files ending with .jpeg
Lastly, instead of -exec rm {} \;, you could use the much simpler -delete.
Putting it together, this looks more appropriate for you:
find /path/to/files* -mtime +1 -type f -name '*.jpeg' -delete
Then narrow your search results to *.jpeg files:
find /path/to/files* -mtime +1 -type f -name "*.jpeg" -exec rm {} \;
It's always better to remove the exec parameter to do a dry run before delete:
find /path/to/files* -mtime +1 -type f -name "*.jpeg"
Each line will be passed to rm command, and nothing more.
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".
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.
Does
find /path/to/files -mtime +X -print | tr '()' '?' | xargs rm -f
work?