X in this article will be the magical number 5 (5 days). X is in days. The main command we will use is find and its -mtime X argument, where X is in units of days. X will will have a + or – infornt of it or no sign, e.g., it will be -mtime -5 or -mtime +5 or just -mtime 5. -mtime -5 means select all files newer than 5 days, -mtime +5 means select all files older then 5 days, -mtime 5 means select all files 5 days old.

Time and time again I let people know that the ‘find’ command in linux, is like a very advantageous file “selection” tool. Here you will see how it works. We get to select all files less then 5 or more then 5 days old (in the current folder, or recuresivly thru every folder) – and if we want we can operate on our selection with -exec, and do a delete with ‘-exec rm’.

shopt -s dotglob

find /path/to/files/* -type f -mtime +5

—OR—

find /path/to/files/ -type f -mtime +5

shopt -u dotglob

shopt -s dotglob

find /path/to/files/* -type f -maxdepth 0 -mtime +5

—OR—

find /path/to/files/ -type f -maxdepth 1 -mtime +5

shopt -u dotglob

shopt -s dotglob

find /path/to/files/* -type f -mtime -5

—OR—

find /path/to/files/ -type f -mtime -5

shopt -u dotglob

shopt -s dotglob

find /path/to/files/* -type f -maxdepth 0 -mtime -5

—OR—

find /path/to/files/ -type f -maxdepth 1 -mtime -5

shopt -u dotglob

Remove the ‘-type f’ part

Want folders only change ‘-type f’ to ‘-type d’

Older then 5 days use -mtime +5, for less then 5 days use -mtime -5

Dont forget to have the * after the path in find.

But * misses ‘.hidden’ files, so enable dotglob shell option with ‘shopt’ command first, and dont forget to disable it. All of this is below.

EANBLES * TO FIND HIDDEN FILES: shopt -s dotglob

DISABLES * FROM FINDING HIDDENS FILES: shopt -u dotglob

The root of our search path in these examples is /path/to/files. And we tell it to look thru everything that * selects there /path/to/files/*

find will select all hidden files without “shopt -s dotglob”.

However this part is hard to explain why it works like this, but here is the effect:

All of our commands without dotglob enabled, will find hidden files, but not in the root of the directory your searching thru

/path/to/files/.hiddenfile <– this file will not be seen with find (unless you enable dotglob: shopt -s dotglob)

/path/to/files/randomfolder/.hiddenfile <– this file will always be found (with or without dotglob enabled: ‘shopt -s dotglob’ OR ‘shopt -u dotglob’)

This is just the way that find searches thru the defined folder… We tell it to look thru everything in the folder with /path/to/files/* so * doesnt select hiddens by default

This dotglob doesnt just apply on files, it also applies on folder (yah. yah. I know folders are files in linux). Also if you are searching recursively and you have a hidden folder on the root of the search path, then you will need dotglob on to look thru it or.

/path/to/files/.hiddenfolder/any-random-file-hidden-or-not <– this file or any other file in there will not be seen with find (unless you enable dotglob: shopt -s dotglob)

/path/to/files/randomfolder/.hiddenfolder/any-random-file-hidden-or-not <– since the hidden folder is not on the root of the search path, it will get looked thru no matter what (with or without dotglob enabled: ‘shopt -s dotglob’ OR ‘shopt -u dotglob’)

All that dotglob business confusing you? Well then just remove the star and change the functions to this format (note we change maxdepth to 1 instead of 0, we need to add 1, if we leave it at 0 it will find nothing.. ever..)

find /path/to/files/ -type f -maxdepth 1 -mtime +5

find /path/to/files/ -type f -maxdepth 1 -mtime -5

find /path/to/files/ -type f -mtime -5

find /path/to/files/ -type f -mtime -5

To delete append this to the end of the command:

-exec rm {} \;

BEFORE DELETING: Run the find command without -exec rm {} \; to simply ensure you selected the correct files

(STEP 1) Shopt to delete hidden files as well, so that * selects hidden files

shopt -s dotglob

(STEP 2) Select which delete command you want

find /path/to/files/* -mtime +5 -exec rm {} \;

—or—

find /path/to/files/ -mtime +5 -exec rm {} \;

OR

find /path/to/files/* -mtime -5 -exec rm {} \;

—or—

find /path/to/files/ -mtime -5 -exec rm {} \;

OR

find /path/to/files/* -maxdepth 0 -mtime +5 -exec rm {} \;

—or—

find /path/to/files/ -maxdepth 1 -mtime +5 -exec rm {} \;

OR

find /path/to/files/* -maxdepth 0 -mtime -5 -exec rm {} \;

—or—

find /path/to/files/ -maxdepth 1 -mtime -5 -exec rm {} \;

(STEP 3) Undo the shopt command, to get back to normal mode where * doesnt select hidden files

shopt -s dotglob

NOTE: to only search the current folder (zero folders depth) use this:

-maxdepth 0

If would of used -maxdepth 1, then it would of searched 1 folder deep recursively.