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Exclude files from rm -rf based on date

I am using this command to remove files from a directory based on date

Quote:

/usr/bin/find /var/backup/sitebackup/ -mtime +5 -exec rm -rf "{}" ";"

But I have one folder in here .notdelete

Which also gets deleted with this command, I can work around this by backing up to different paths etc but I would nevertheless like to know if it's possible to adjust the above command to still delete all content except the .notdelete directory.

Thanks

The easiest way would be to pipe the results of find through grep, then use it as an argument to rm. You could use name patterns with find, but you might not be able to prevent the deletion of the contents of the directory easily.

Code:

rm -rfv $( /usr/bin/find /var/backup/sitebackup/ -mtime +5 -depth | egrep -v '(^|/)\.notdelete($|/)' )

ta0kira

edit:
I should have looked at the manpage:

Code:

/usr/bin/find /var/backup/sitebackup/ '!' -wholename '*/.notdelete/*' -a '!' -name .notdelete -mtime +5 -exec rm -rf "{}" ";"

Quote:

Originally Posted by ta0kira (Post 3419278)

The easiest way would be to pipe the results of find through grep,

I think find supports logical operations:

Code:

OPERATORS

      Listed in order of decreasing precedence:



      ( expr )

              Force precedence.



      ! expr True if expr is false.



      -not expr

              Same as ! expr, but not POSIX compliant.



      expr1 expr2

              Two expressions in a row are taken to be joined with an implied "and"; expr2  is  not  evaluated  if

              expr1 is false.



      expr1 -a expr2

              Same as expr1 expr2.



      expr1 -and expr2

              Same as expr1 expr2, but not POSIX compliant.



      expr1 -o expr2

              Or; expr2 is not evaluated if expr1 is true.



      expr1 -or expr2

              Same as expr1 -o expr2, but not POSIX compliant.



      expr1 , expr2

              List;  both expr1 and expr2 are always evaluated.  The value of expr1 is discarded; the value of the

              list is the value of expr2.      The comma operator can be useful for searching for several  differ-

              ent  types of thing, but traversing the filesystem hierarchy only once.  The -fprintf action can be

              used to list the various matched items into several different output files.

See "man find" for details.

So using something like

Code:

-mtime +5 -and -not -iname \*.notdelete\*

should work. Haven't tested it, though.

Isn't this what "-prune" is for ?.