By the time, many files are still on my system and I don't need them anymore, so how to delete all files that are one year old at least?
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1 Answer
You can do it with this command
find /path/to/files* -mtime +365 -exec rm {} \;
Some explain
/path/to/files* is the path to the files.
-mtime is used to specify the number of days old that the file is. +365 will find files older than 365 days which is one year
-exec allows you to pass in a command such as rm.
Edit Thanks to @Oli note --> you can do it by:
find /path/to/files* -mtime +365 -delete
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9You should always quote the
{}in-exec(so it reads-exec rm "{}" \;). This makes sure that spaces are handled properly... And you could just use the-deletefunction instead of-exec.– Oli ♦Jan 31, 2014 at 16:03 -
2@Oli Huh??? (What you have said cannot be right, considering that the shell turns
"{}"into{}before passing it tofindin the first place; thenfindsubstitutes for it. Quoting{}is suggested in case{and}themselves may sometimes be treated specially by the shell--which has nothing to do with blank spaces. And often{}doesn't have to be quoted. I can't think of any situation, at least when invoking find from a Bourne-style shell, when{}, with nothing inside, appearing by itself as an argument, would have to be quoted. Can you?) Oct 9, 2014 at 0:58 -
2@EliahKagan Yeah, turns out
findhandles escaping for itself but it's not a bad habit to be in while scripting. It doesn't hurt.– Oli ♦Oct 9, 2014 at 13:25 -
3@Oli But it doesn't help, even in principle. If
finddidn't handle escaping,"{}"would still have the same effect as{}--just neither would work, instead of both working. That{}and"{}"behave the same isn't--and cannot be--due to any special feature of find. Confusing what gets expanded by the shell with what gets expanded by some other program is a bad habit. We all make that mistake occasionally, but it's still a mistake--not a best practice. (One might still quote{}to help humans see it's not a pattern for brace expansion, but that's unrelated to word splitting.) Oct 9, 2014 at 15:24