Shell – Delete files older than 500 days

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I have directory with files from 2010 year.. I want to delete all files older than 500 days and I tried this:

find /var/log/arc/* -type f -mtime +500 -delete {}\;

But I get this:

-bash: /usr/bin/find: Argument list too long

As I know this means that there are too many files and find can't handle them. But even if I put +2000 which is 3+ years I still getting this.

What I'm missing here?

Best Answer

You're missing that find doesn't need a list of files as input. The problem is that the glob /var/log/arc/* expands to too many files. However, find will recurse into subdirectories by default, so there's no need to use the glob at all:

find /var/log/arc/ -type f -mtime +500 -delete

-delete is a non-standard predicate. If your find implementation doesn't support it, you can use:

find /var/log/arc/ -type f -mtime +500 -exec rm -f {} +

instead.

Related Solutions

Find – How to Find and Delete Files Older Than Specific Days in Unix

You could start by saying find /var/dtpdev/tmp/ -type f -mtime +15. This will find all files older than 15 days and print their names. Optionally, you can specify -print at the end of the command, but that is the default action. It is advisable to run the above command first, to see what files are selected.

After you verify that the find command is listing the files that you want to delete (and no others), you can add an "action" to delete the files. The typical actions to do this are:

-exec rm -f {} \; (or, equivalently, -exec rm -f {} ';')
This will run rm -f on each file; e.g.,

rm -f /var/dtpdev/tmp/A1/B1; rm -f /var/dtpdev/tmp/A1/B2; rm -f /var/dtpdev/tmp/A1/B3; …

-exec rm -f {} +
This will run rm -f on many files at once; e.g.,
```
rm -f /var/dtpdev/tmp/A1/B1 /var/dtpdev/tmp/A1/B2 /var/dtpdev/tmp/A1/B3 …
```
so it may be slightly faster than option 1. (It may need to run rm -f a few times if you have thousands of files.)
-delete
This tells find itself to delete the files, without running rm. This may be infinitesimally faster than the -exec variants, but it will not work on all systems.

So, if you use option 2, the whole command would be:

find /var/dtpdev/tmp/ -type f -mtime +15 -exec rm -f {} +

Files – How to Delete Files Older Than X Days

Be careful with special file names (spaces, quotes) when piping to rm.

There is a safe alternative - the -delete option:

find /path/to/directory/ -mindepth 1 -mtime +5 -delete

That's it, no separate rm call and you don't need to worry about file names.

Replace -delete with -depth -print to test this command before you run it (-delete implies -depth).

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Find – How to Find and Delete Files Older Than Specific Days in Unix

Files – How to Delete Files Older Than X Days

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