Trying to do something wierd with the date command

Thanx to some help from Tink, I am now able to rename files using the date (format /data/openldaptemp/dump-yyyymmdd.ldif). However, I want to delete files older than seven days old based on the date stored in the file name. I don't want to use the date attributes of the files for a variety of reasons. Thus, this does NOT work for me -

find -name "dump*" -ctime +7 -exec rm {} \;

What I tried to do was something along these lines -

lookback=8
while [ -e /data/openldaptemp/dump-$(date --date='${lookback} days ago' +%Y%m%d).ldif ]
do
rm /data/openldaptemp/dump-$(date --date='${lookback} days ago' +%Y%m%d).ldif
lookback=$lookback+1
done

However, the date command doesn't allow variables (or I can't figure out how to get it to allow variables) in the --date='' option. How should I do this?



Colin

Please tell me what is tink.
What do not work for you ? Is it the command: find -name "dump*" -ctime +7 -exex rm {} \ ?

First, Tink, or Tinker, is another member of LinuxQuestions.org that helped me get started using the date commmand in the first place.

As for what doesn't work, the solution Tink gave (find -name "dump*" -ctime +7 -exec rm {} \ relies on the date attribute of the files, which I do NOT want to use. I want to find files based on the date written in the file name. Is there someway to do this?

You will need to use a scripting language like perl.
Basically you will readdir for files.
Split file names by "-" dump-yyyymmdd.ldif
again with "." so you end up with yyyymmdd referencing the dump-yyyymmdd.ldif

sorta like this

#!/usr/bin/perl


my ($source, @dir, $dir, $file, $inc);
my $div = "/";

my $date = `date +%Y%m%d`;
chomp($date);
my $source = shift; #Accepts search directory as ARG from command line
opendir(SD, "$source") or die ($!);
my @dir = grep { ! /^\./ or !-d} readdir SD; #filter out currentdirectory, 'dot' files and subdirectories
$inc = @dir;
exit(0) if $inc < 6; #If there are less than 7 files in this directory just exit
closedir(SD);
foreach $dir(@dir)
{
my $fname = $source.$div.$dir;
if ($dir =~ /\.ldif$/)
{
my @sep1 = split("-", $dir);
my @sep2 = split(/\./, $sep1[1]);
my $fdate = $sep2[0]; #Holds the numeric portion of file name;
if ($date - $fdate >= 7)
{
unlink($fname) or die ($!)
}
}
}

This works except when the month end rolls around.