Problem with find command

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi,
I am using the find command to remove all the files in a directory ending .NEW and created more than a day ago.

The command I am using is:

find . -name '*.NEW' -ctime +1 | xargs rm

The problem is that it does not work properly. I still have files which were craeted more than a day ago.

In other words, when I run this
find . -name '*.NEW' -ctime +1

I dont get an output.

Is there anything wrong with the syntax or something else?

Thanx

2

the right syntax is

find . -name "*.NEW" -ctime +1 | xargs rm

it is double quote at the beginning and the end of "*.NEW" not single quote.

try

find . -name "*.NEW" -ctime +1

make sure you issued the find command from the right directory

3

I have used both single and double quotes but it doesnt work with either. Also I am in the correct directory.

4

Since you're using the -ctime option, do an "ls -lc" in the directory to make sure that you know what the ctime is. You may want to try the find command with the -mtime option.

5

Hi Perderabo,

ls -lc returns the files created more than day ago.
Also, I tried mtime but didnt work either.

Strangely when I use

find . -name '*.NEW' -ctime -1 it gives me the correct results.

6

Got it.

The command should be

find . -name '*.NEW' -ctime +0

Thanx everyone

7

You can do the delete as part of the find command:

find . -name "*.NEW" -ctime +0  -print -exec rm {} \;

Note that this prints out the name of each file it deletes.

8

Hi kemisola,

I would rather use xargs than exec.

xargs rm

By using xargs in this command, I can remove all of the files that end in .NEW, but instead of creating a separate process for each file , only one process is started through xargs.

That way it is more efficient.