File::Find::Perl
------Original Message------
From: Jonathan Swartz
To: module-authors@perl.org
Sent: Jun 30, 2009 7:59 PM
Subject: module/script to clean up old files and prune empty directories
At various places around our system we want to clean up files older
than x, and sometimes prune empty directories. Naturally we have to be
careful doing this lest we accidentally blow away far too many of the
wrong files.
I'm thinking about a Perl module and accompanying script with this
interface:
cleanup_files.pl --age=age --dir=dir --name=name [--dry-run] [--
prune-empty-dirs]
where age can be specified as "1h", "2day", etc., and name is a
required glob pattern, and dir is checked to make sure it is
sufficiently deep (e.g. can't use /). --dry-run tells you what would
be deleted. --prune-empty-dirs also causes empty dirs to be pruned.
The script would report at its end how many files and directories were
removed.
The idea is to have a convenient, but safe, one-liner to put in a cron
for each directory that needs periodic cleaning.
In the past we've done the old "find ... | xargs rm -f", but it
doesn't have the safety checks, directory pruning, or reporting.
Does anyone else think this is (mildly) valuable? Am I reinventing the
wheel, in terms of Perl libraries or other Unix utilities besides
basic find?
Thanks
Jon
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