On Thursday, February 25, 2021 at 10:45:09 AM UTC-5 paneva wrote:
> Hi Ansible wizards!
> I am currently working on few tasks in a playbook that are going to
> remove old files. There is a set number of files that I need to keep, say 3
> (most recent), and the rest should be removed. I am doing some math magic
> in Ansible and some shell commands to achieve this. I can't help but
> wonder, however, if this a "recommended" way of doing this kind of thing.
> It seems to me that I am doing too many tasks to achieve this and I begin
> to wonder if I am making this more complicated than it should be. Thanks in
> advance !!!
> Here is what I have:
> - name: Get list of txt all files in the directory - done for visibility
> shell:
> cmd: "ls -t *.txt"
> chdir: "{{a_dir}}"
> register: list_all_files
>
> - name: Get total number of txt files in this dir
> shell:
> cmd: " ls -t *.txt | wc -l "
> chdir: "{{a_dir}}"
> register: total_number_files
>
> - set_fact:
> number_of_files_to_keep: "3"
> curr_number_files: "{{total_number_files.stdout}}"
> num_files_to_remove: "{{(total_number_files|int) -
> (number_of_files_to_keep |int)}}"
>
> - name: Store the files to be removed in a list
> shell:
> cmd: "ls -t | tail -{{num_files_toremove}}"
> register: list_files_to_remove
>
>
Yeah, that's a big mess that avoids using most features that ansible
provides. Even if you want to stick to the `ls` approach, there's no reason
to call it so many times.
- name: Get list of all txt files in the directory
shell:
cmd: ls -t *.txt
chdir: "{{ a_dir }}"
register: list_all_files
- name: Store the files to be removed in a list
set_fact:
list_files_to_remove: "{{
list_all_files.stdout_lines[(number_of_files_to_keep | int):] }}"
vars:
number_of_files_to_keep: "3"
More idiomatic would be to use the `find` module:
- name: Find existing text files
find:
path: "{{ a_dir }}"
pattern: "*.txt"
register: result
- name: Remove all but 3 files
file:
dest: "{{ item.path }}"
state: absent
loop: "{{ (result.files | sort(attribute='mtime'))[:-3] }}"
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