On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 03:01:13PM -0700, David Spencer, Internet Handyman wrote: > Guys, I'm sorry about asking this on the list; but I seem to have a mental > block when it comes to regular expressions. Here's what I'm trying to do:
That's what this list is here for! ;) > I have a lot of directories with a vast number of files, some of which I wishy > to delete based on the month they were created. I've built a file from some > full directory listings that has all the files I wish to delete. (Just go with > me on this and don't suggest alternative methods of performing the task - I'm > simplfying the job so it can be explained more easily.) Another alternative might be to use "find" to find all files created or modified within a certain timespan, and then delete them. (Or simply list them, which you can capture into a file for review, and delete the files at your leisure) You could also use 'find' as a means of getting easier-to-parse output (additional or fewer fields, and formatted differently) than what you get from "ls -l". e.g.: find -mmin +43200 # more modified more than 30 days (30*24*60 minutes) ago find -not -newermt '2010-04-01 00:00:00' # files modified ('m') longer ago # ("not newer") than the date ('t') # April 1st Of course, I've pretty much never had reason to use these, so I might be off the mark with them, but I figured "find" is a lot more flexible and safer than "ls -l" followed by regexp magic. ;) -bill! _______________________________________________ vox-tech mailing list vox-tech@lists.lugod.org http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech