Hi,

I need a script (bash) for cron.hourly to erase empty file in a specific directory.

Help please.

Thx
dave

#!/bin/bash
directory=/mydir
for file in `ls $directory`
do
if [ ! -s $directory/$file ]
then rm $directory/$file
fi
done

Replace "mydir" with the name of the directory that has the file. The above script would test all files to see if they are more than 0 bytes. Any that were not (and therefore "empty" would be deleted.

If you know the file always has the same name it would be safer to simply use that name and get rid of the for, do and done lines. Change "$file" to the real file name.

I tested this on /root after creating an empty file there with touch. I'd strongly suggest you do a test of a non-critical directory before you try it to verify it works. Remember this and all advice here is without any warranty (real or implied) and should be tried at your own risk.

Thx jlightner,

I had to modify the sript slightly to get it past the syntax screens, perhaps different verions of bash I don't know.

Changes in lines 2 and 3

Mine came out as below:

#!/bin/bash
directoy='/mydir'
for file in $(ls $directory)
do
if [ ! -s $directory/$file ]
then rm $directory/$file
fi
done

But works like a charm

Thanks

Glad I could help.

By the way it should have worked as written (and did for me). However, whatever works is always the "right" way to do it. Technically the way you did it is the "new" way and the way I did it is the "old style" (according to bash man page).

I wonder if perhaps you had an issue on the following line:

Note that the character here is the backtick (`) rather than the single quote ('). Back tick usually being the lower case symbol on the same key as the tilde (~). Single quote being the the lower case on the same key as the double quote ("). Backtick is a/k/a "accent grave or backquote".

If you used the single quote instead of backtick you would have had an issue.

I doubt there is a version of bash that doesn't use the backtick special meaning. That would be a major change to functionality requiring rewrite of many scripts.

Thanks again,

Interesting tid-bits.

Suppose that's the next path I´ll be going down.... the 'scripts' path. Or would that be the `scripts` path.

Just another fork() in the road
Dave