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Old 07-11-2013, 07:31 AM   #1
kauuttt
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Shell script for deleting the oldest directory within a directory


Hi all,

My scenario is -
Suppose we have a directory (dir1), which in turn contains "N" number of hidden directories. From this point of time my script is going to take the control. The job of my script will be, remove the oldest directory (a hidden directory), amoung the list of directories (the number can be anything) which are presnt in the 'dir1'.

I have doing this by -
Code:
ls -1 -alt | awk ' /^d/ {print $9}' | tail -2 | head -1 | xargs rm -rf
Is there any better/graceful way of doing the same.?

Thank you.
 
Old 07-11-2013, 08:09 AM   #2
pan64
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sure, there is a better way:
rm -rf `ls -altr | awk ' /^d/ {print $9; exit}'`
but it will not work if dirname contains spaces. Actually in that case you should avoid ls or need a more complicated perl/awk/whatever script.
 
Old 07-11-2013, 09:28 AM   #3
druuna
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Even though the community always rants about not using ls as input (which, in general I agree with), it does have a few nice options that can be used to your advantage.

Have a look at this:
Code:
rm -rf $(ls -1dAtr --quoting-style=shell --group-directories-first .[a-zA-Z0-9]* | head -1)
I've used A instead of a to get rid of the . and .. (just in case), the l option is replaced by 1 (no need for the long listing, 1 column works).

The quoting-style= options can has a few ways of quoting text, I'm using shell to put the output in single quotes (do have a look at the ls manual page). No need to worry about spaces and other "weird" characters.

The group-directories-first makes sure directories are listed first, this together with the r option makes sure that the first dot directory shown is the oldest.

The d option is needed to keep ls from outputting contents of the directories itself.

EDIT: My initial version didn't work, the above is tested (minimal) and seems to do the job.

Last edited by druuna; 07-11-2013 at 09:43 AM.
 
Old 07-12-2013, 12:37 PM   #4
cbtshare
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this seemed like a very interesting little project, so here is my one liner using process substitution is the best way IMHO
Code:
IFS= read -d $\0 line < <(find . -maxdepth 1 -type d -printf '%T@ %p\0' 2>/dev/null | sort -z -n) ;echo ${line}
You can then do what ever you wanted with the file the command returns.
Using the find command I found type directory, not going into sub folders with maxdepth,then the print command to display the time stamp T, @ for the seconds, %p to display the path and then give the command a noticeable ending character "\0"=null character. Pipe any errors because of permissions to /dev/null and then sort numerically and by the null character being the end of a file.Pipe the process substitution into the read command using the IFS= so it reads folders with spaces and the -d on the read as a delimiter being the null character.

Last edited by cbtshare; 07-12-2013 at 01:26 PM.
 
Old 07-12-2013, 02:23 PM   #5
jpollard
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And note - if a subdirectory IS recent, it will not be reflected in the date associated with the parent directory (nothing changed there).

Take the .mozilla directory. The dates reflected are only when the directory itself is modified (or read, depending on which date you are looking at). If the file isin a subdirectory (such as firefox/<something>.default/OfflineCache/...) then the modification date of the .mozilla directory will not change.

Also something like the plugins directory, which can contain symbolic links to things outside the directory. The things outside can be completely replaced without changing ANY date associated with file/directory in the tree.
 
Old 07-14-2013, 01:05 AM   #6
cbtshare
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Yea sub directories wouldnt be a one liner.
 
Old 07-14-2013, 05:11 AM   #7
Madhu Desai
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I'm learning/experimenting xargs, so my solution is based on xargs... so, how about this:

Code:
$ ls -1trd /dir1/.[^.]*/ | head -n1 | xargs -0 rm -rf
Off topic, is spell checker has been added to editor?

Last edited by Madhu Desai; 07-14-2013 at 07:21 AM.
 
  


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