Find and delete

Let's say there are thousands of WAV files in my Recordings folder and I want to clean up WAV files older than 5 days, I don't have to write fancy script. I just need to run this command

#find  .  -name  "*.wav"  -mtime +5 -exec rm {} \;

Explanation:

#find : Find command

. : Dot stands for current location

-name: Look for the name pattern
"*.wav"   : Find wave files

+5 : older than 5 days

-exec: Execute

rm : remove command

{} \;  : Terminate the command line [Note: there is space between rm, {} and \; ]



Let's say I want to remove every files older than 5 days in current directory, I can simply run the following command

#find . -mtime +5 -exec rm {} \;


dot (.)  represents the current directory


Let's say I want to setup interactive way (ask use before deleting file) to remove the files plder than 5 days

#find . -mtime +5 -exec rm -i  {} \;


rm - i : remove interactively


Let's say I want to forcefully remove files older than 5 days,


#find . -mtime +5 -exec rm -f  {} \;

rm - f : remove forecefully