find only 6 char long

find /tmp -type f -mtime +180 

I have this script get the list to clean up files older than 180 days under /tmp.
But, I want to make sure to grep only a type of files, which have only 6 character long.

....
LT3hqa                               dRMoya                               zZefaa
LTAeia                               dRahaa                               zZqbaa
LTIkMa                               dRqbaa                               zlQeEa
LTenMa                               dRunia                               zlqgEa
LTmlqa                               dSEeUa                               zoaaya
LV3nEa                               dSMb7a                               zpYhia
LV7caa                               dSYiqa                               zpqgUa
LVAp7a                               dSaaEa                               zvmpaa
LVYjUa                               dSacya                               zw3cMa
LVqbaa                               dSmnia                               zzAmaa
LVylqa                               dTAeaa
LWmbia                               dTEfMa
...

Please advise how to

find

files with 6-charactor long and 180 days old.

This should work:

find /tmp -type f -mtime +180 | grep '^.\{6\}$'

It returns nothing.

If I just run

find /tmp -type f -mtime +180

, I am getting these outputs.

....
/tmp/yZqcMa
/tmp/yZyiya
/tmp/y_Mdia
/tmp/y_Qcia
/tmp/y_Qcya
/tmp/y_ap7a
/tmp/y_mkia
/tmp/y_qfUa
/tmp/y_yc7a
/tmp/ypMe7a
/tmp/ypYk7a
/tmp/yxAi7a
....

Is it the reason??
Please advise.

Yes, just add 5 more characters to include /tmp/:

find /tmp -type f -mtime +180 | grep '^.\{11\}$'

try this..

find /tmp -type f -mtime +180 | awk -F/ 'length($NF) == 6'

It pulls out:

olympus:/> find /tmp -type f -mtime +180 | awk -F/ 'length($NF) == 6'
/tmp/.alist
/tmp/EFILE1
/tmp/acsisvc/f88c1119/.inuse
/tmp/acsisvc/f88c1119/sdscan
/tmp/diagSEgenSnap/general/errlog
/tmp/diagSEgenSnap/general/ike.db
/tmp/diagSEgenSnap/general/lsfilt
/tmp/diagSEgenSnap/general/trcfmt
/tmp/ecfile
/tmp/ibmsupt/general/trcfmt
/tmp/ibmsupt/tcpip/rc.net
/tmp/ibmsupt/tcpip/rc.qos
/tmp/prereq
.....

It should have pulled out:

/tmp/.alist
/tmp/EFILE1
/tmp/ecfile
/tmp/prereq
..

which only 6 character long followed by /tmp/

Please advise.

Try it the simple/stupid findless and egrepless way:

ls -a /tmp/ | grep '^......$'

It won't add /tmp/ to the names.

Why not just -name = "??????" ?

Because it will still be recursive and pull out all sorts of files he didn't want.

Yes, just noticed he didn't want that. Then just ls ??????

add '-prune' to 'find'

or maxdepth :

find /tmp -maxdepth 1 -type f -mtime +180 -name '??????'

olympus:/> ls -a /tmp/ | grep '^......$'
.alist
EFILE1
ecfile
prereq
tl_fix

It pulls out 6-character long file names, but somehow, it doesn't work with

olympus:/> find /tmp -type f -mtime +180 | grep '^......$'

This returns nothing while there are many of files older than 180 days.

try with this....

find /tmp -type f -mtime +180 | grep '/tmp/......$'

Still nothing returns. I am on AIX 6.1

try with this...

find /tmp -type f -mtime +180 | awk  'length($0) == 11'

Here many ways of doing this are described in this thread but any of these are not solving your purpose...

Since that find command is allowed to descend into subdirectories, there exists the possiblity that another directory named "tmp" could be visited. Because of this, your grep regular expression is underspecified. You must anchor it at the beginning as well.

Based on that output, I don't see how pamu's suggestion could not have returned something.

Could there be whitespace after the filenames? If not, you must have made some mistake in typing the command. Perhaps a dot too many/few?

Here's yet another suggestion, a find approach that restricts itself to AIX 6.1 primaries:

find /tmp -type f -mtime +180 -name '??????' -print -o -type d -exec test {} \!= /tmp \; -prune

Regards,
Alister