Xrfgtjtk

Tried to use a wrapper around find but hitting the following problem. I want e.g to provide a few directories as arguments but the last argument is always a number that indicates how old data should be removed. For example:

rmoldfiles dir1 dir2 dir3 20

This should remove the old files that are older than 30 days looking at mtime of course

Here is the script:

#!/bin/bash



die()

{

  echo >&2 "$@"

  exit 1

}



usage()

{

  echo >&2 "Usage: $0 [dir1 dir2 dir3] [days old]"

  die

}



if [[ (($# < 1)) || -f "$1" ]]; then

  if [[ -f "$1" ]]; then 

    printf '%sn' "Please provide a directory"

  fi

  usage

fi 



while (( $# )); do 

  while IFS= read -r -d $'' file; do

    printf 'rm %sn' "$file" 

    sleep 1

  done < <(find "$1" -type f -mtime +$2 -print0)

  shift

done



echo "Done deleting"

Problem

How to shift directories but not the last argument.

A couple of solutions.

1. 
   

   Pick out the last command line argument.

   
   
   

   args=( "$@" )
   
   num=${args[-1]}
   
   args=( "${args[@]:0:${#args[@]} - 1}" )
   
   

   
   
   

   (then use find "${args[@]}" -type f -mtime "+$num" -print -delete to delete those files).

   
   


2. 
   

   Put the number first.

   
   
   

    num=$1; shift
   
   

   
   
   

   (then use find "$@" -type f -mtime "+$num" -print -delete to delete the files).

   
   

The loop is only needed if you have hundreds or thousands of directories to process, in which case the find command would be too long with a single invocation. Otherwise, don't loop. find can take multiple search paths.

If you want to insert a delay and use rm explicitly, and have some formatted output for each file:

find "$@" -type f -mtime "+$num" -exec sh -c '

    for pathname do

        printf "Removing %sn" "$pathname"

        rm -- "$pathname"

        sleep 1

    done' sh {} +

If you find that you do need to loop over the directories (or if this just feels better):

# Assumes that the arguments are in the order

#      num dir1 dir2 dir3 ...



num=$1

shift



for dir do

    printf 'Processing %s...n' "$dir"



    find "$dir" -type f -mtime "+$num" -exec sh -c '

        for pathname do

            printf "Removing %sn" "$pathname"

            rm -- "$pathname"

            sleep 1

        done' sh {} +

done

or,

# Assumes that the arguments are in the order

#      dir1 dir2 dir3 ... num



args=( "$@" )

num=${args[-1]}

args=( "${args[@]:0:${#args[@]} - 1}" )



for dir in "${args[@]}"; do



    # as above



done

Since you're only expecting (and providing) three directories before the age parameter, don't loop indiscriminately; instead, loop explicitly:

for dir in 1 2 3; do

  # work with "$1"

  shift

done

or stop looping when there's one parameter left:

while [ "$#" -gt 1 ]; do

  echo "Work with $1"

  shift;

done

Since the "days" parameter moves during each shift, you'll need to save it off initially:

days=$4

... before calling the loop.

... and if you allow for an arbitrary number of directories to be passed:

[ "$#" -gt 1 ] || exit 1

days=${@: -1}

while [ "$#" -gt 1 ]; do

  echo work with "$1" and "$days"

  shift

done

This uses the bash array $@ and asks for the last element of it (indicated by -1, separated by a space to prevent it from being interpreted as a modifier to :); it then loops over the parameters one by one until there's one left (the initial 'day' parameter at the end).

Just change (( $# )) to (( $# > 1)):

while (( $# > 1 )); do

  echo "file is: $1"

done



echo "days are: $1"