Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!linac!att!bellcore!uunet!rbj
From: rbj@uunet.UU.NET (Root Boy Jim)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.internals
Subject: Re: Crafty automatic file deletion?
Message-ID: <126507@uunet.UU.NET>
Date: 26 Mar 91 06:30:30 GMT
References: <SQUASH.91Mar15194116@heat.math.ufl.edu>
Organization: UUNET Communications Services, Falls Church, VA
Lines: 29

In article <SQUASH.91Mar15194116@heat.math.ufl.edu> squash@math.ufl.edu (Jonathan King) writes:
>My .logout contain a call to _find to automatically remove files
>satisfying certain criteria.  I would like the file's name to provide
>the criterion.  For example, files
>
>  letter.rm.60.tex
>  c_hack.rm.120.c
>
>would be automatically removed if unmodified for 60 and 120 days.
>  (Of course, I could put the specific numbers "60" and "120" into my
>  call to _find.  I would like this to work, automatically, for all
>  numbers that are valid to, say, the -mtime switch of _find.)
>Can this be done by _find or by some other program?

If you can limit yourself to a small number of days, then try:

	for days in 30 60 90 120; do
		find . -name "*.rm.$days.*" -mtime +$days -print | xargs rm -f
	done

Otherwise, First pick all the files matching this pattern, then process them.

	find ~ -name "*.rm.*.*" -print | maybe-remove

Of course now you have to write the latter program.
A good language to write it in would be perl.
-- 
		[rbj@uunet 1] stty sane
		unknown mode: sane