ashish@janus.Berkeley.EDU (Ashish Mukharji) (07/10/90)
Recently, I had to remove all of a user's files older than a certain date. That was easily accomplished with find(1), but deleting the resulting (empty) directory structure presents a greater problem. The user's home directory is the root of a large, mostly empty directory tree. I want to delete all directories that do not contain any regular files - find starts with . and works its way down (inorder). What I need is a way to do a postorder traversal of the directory structure. Is there a simple way, short of writing a C routine? -ashish Tuberculosis. It's what they used to call consumption. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- . . !ucbvax!janus!ashish ashish%janus@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU #43 Casa Zimbabwe 2422 Ridge Road Berkeley CA 94709 (415) 549-4962
ecl@cbnewsj.att.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) (07/10/90)
In article <37481@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> ashish@janus.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Ashish Mukharji) writes: > Recently, I had to remove all of a user's files older than a > certain date. That was easily accomplished with find(1), but deleting the > resulting (empty) directory structure presents a greater problem. The user's > home directory is the root of a large, mostly empty directory tree. I want > to delete all directories that do not contain any regular files - find starts > with . and works its way down (inorder). What I need is a way to do a > postorder traversal of the directory structure. Is there a simple way, short > of writing a C routine? I should say RTFM, but: find top-directory-name -depth -type d -exec rmdir {} \; The -depth goes postorder. The rmdir will fail on any non-empty directories. Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 201-957-2070 | att!mtgzy!ecl or ecl@mtgzy.att.com -- The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. -Edmund Burke
tif@doorstop.austin.ibm.com (Paul Chamberlain) (07/11/90)
In article <37481@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> ashish@janus.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Ashish Mukharji) writes: >... but deleting the resulting (empty) directory structure presents >a greater problem. ... Isn't this what -depth does for find: find . -depth -type d -exec rmdir {} \; I'd try this but "-depth" has absolutely no noticeable effect on my RT. Paul Chamberlain | I do NOT represent IBM tif@doorstop, sc30661@ausvm6 512/838-7008 | ...!cs.utexas.edu!ibmaus!auschs!doorstop.austin.ibm.com!tif
lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall) (07/11/90)
In article <37481@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> ashish@janus.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Ashish Mukharji) writes:
: Recently, I had to remove all of a user's files older than a
: certain date. That was easily accomplished with find(1), but deleting the
: resulting (empty) directory structure presents a greater problem. The user's
: home directory is the root of a large, mostly empty directory tree. I want
: to delete all directories that do not contain any regular files - find starts
: with . and works its way down (inorder). What I need is a way to do a
: postorder traversal of the directory structure. Is there a simple way, short
: of writing a C routine?
With regard to getting the directories in the right order, some find programs
have a -depth switch to do this. Otherwise, pipe the output through sort -r.
Then you have to wrap something around to do the rmdir:
If there aren't too many:
rmdir `find . -type d -print | sort -r`
If you have xargs:
find . -type d -print | sort -r | xargs rmdir
If you have Perl:
find . -type d -print | sort -r | perl -ne 'chop; rmdir;'
Using sh:
find . -type d -print | sort -r | while read dir; do rmdir $dir; done
Using sed:
find . -type d -print | sort -r | sed 's/^/rmdir /' | sh
With all but one of these, you'll have to ignore the error messages on
directories that can't be removed. (Where ignoring may consist of >&/dev/null
or 2>/dev/null, depending on your culture (or lack thereof :-).)
The perl solution will be most efficient if you have the rmdir system call.
Otherwise the xargs solution will probably be best.
Larry Wall
lwall@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.govdavidsen@antarctica.crd.GE.COM (william E Davidsen) (07/11/90)
In article <1990Jul10.130548.10216@cbnewsj.att.com>, ecl@cbnewsj.att.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) writes: |> I should say RTFM, but: |> find top-directory-name -depth -type d -exec rmdir {} \; |> |> The -depth goes postorder. |> The rmdir will fail on any non-empty directories. If you're on a machine with xargs it will go a LOT faster for big trees if you say: find top-dir -type d -depth -print | xargs rmdir The suggested solution will work perfectly, but will run rmdir for EVERY directory. xargs allows doing a bunch with each process. -- Bill Davidsen (davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.com, uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen) GE Corp R&D Center, Schenectady NY Moderator of comp.binaries.ibm.pc and 386users mailing list "Stupidity, like virtue, is it's own reward" -me
A_DOUGHERTY@acc.haverford.edu (Andy Dougherty) (07/14/90)
... suggestions to use find -depth Of course some versions of find do not have (or at least do not document) the -depth option, so RTFM won't help. In that case the sort trick posted earlier will work.