Problems with Syntax

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

I'm an experienced programmer that is new to shell scripting. I'm putting together a shell script that erases all files of a certain age. These files are in directories provided on lines of a file that is provided via command line argument and takes any errors(permissions, etc) and emails them to a user. If someone could help me clean up my syntax it would be greatly appreciated.
My idea of what the script should look like: (assuming $file and $days passed in from command line)

foreach($line of $file)
  find $line -mtime +$days -exec r -f{}\; > errors.txt
x=(wc -l < errors.txt)
if(x>0)
  mail -s "errors" someone@email.com < errors.txt
fi
2

I don't know what the r command does, but try this:

#!/bin/sh
file=directories.txt
days=100
while read line; do
    find $line -mtime +$days -exec r -f {} \; > errors.txt
    test -s errors.txt  &&  mail -s "errors" someone@email.com < errors.txt
done < $file
3

replace ....

if(x>0)
  mail -s "errors" someone@email.com < errors.txt
fi

by

if [ $x>0 ]; then  mail -s "errors" someone@email.com < errors.txt;fi
4 
#!/bin/ksh
# or bash
# cleanscript
# arg1 = file, arg2= days

[ $# != 2 ] && echo "usage:$0 dirlistfile days" >&2  && exit 1

file="$1"
days="$2"
cat "$file" | while read line 
do
  find $line -mtime +$days -exec rm -f  {} \; 2> errors.txt
  # do cmd and put stdout to the var
  x=$( wc -l < errors.txt )
  # numeric testing builtin
  if  ((  x>0  ))
  # or using test or [  builtin command
  # if [ "$x" -gt 0 ]
  then
         mail -s "errors" someone@email.com < errors.txt
  fi
done

chmod a+rx cleanscript
./cleanscript dirlistfile  7