Using find with file name and mtime to remove files gets Arg list too long error

smaxey · 12-25-2009, 08:40 AM

I need to delete all *.trc files that are older than 30 days and I am getting a "Argument list too long" error. There are other files that should not be deleted which is why I am using the "*.trc" and newer files need to be kept as well. I have seen other postings but they do not cover both of the conditions. Below are 2 of the many attempts at doing this but I cannot get this to work. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

find *.trc -mtime +31 -print| xargs rm -f {}
find *.trc -mtime +31 -print -exec rm -f {} \;

druuna · 12-25-2009, 08:53 AM

Hi,

You are not using find correctly. It should be:

find <start location> <other options>

The start location is missing and you do not specify you are looking for files named *.trc

Try this: find . -name "*.trc" -mtime +31

If that works, add the remove part: find . -name "*.trc" -mtime +31 -exec rm -f {} \;

The . (dot) tells find to start from where you type the command, you can also use a hard path (/home/user/ for instance).

Hope this helps

smaxey · 12-30-2009, 01:26 PM

druuna,

Thank you for replying, I had tried find . -name "*.trc" -mtime +31 as well as the others examples and got the "Argument list too long" error. I can get it to work if I use only one of the conditions but not both. I know I could get the list of files and loop through them and delete the files but I was trying to get this to work if possible. Thanks again for replying.

wolfgangsz · 12-30-2009, 05:34 PM

Hi smaxey,

your reply is a little confusing, as the combination of matching both file name AND timestamp should actually return fewer results compared to running find with each match on its own.
Have you actually checked the result of running the find without the -exec option to see whether it matches your expectations?
Have you read the manpage for find?