Re^2: Delete all but the most recent backup file

Thanks it certainly is useful and does perform deletion. However I have two queries: (1) Komodo Edit reports:

Name "main::DATA" used only once: possible typo at bk_remove.pl line 7
+3.
readline() on unopened filehandle DATA at bk_remove.pl line 73.
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This is referring to <DATA> in the code. (2) It appears the code does the deletion based on the date listed in the filename, while this is ideal I've done the previous coding based on the day modified only (using -M) and not the date on the filename so I would like to keep it this way. Any ideas on how I could modify this to the way I did it? Much appreciated for all answers, apologies I am not very good at perl however I do get the odd scripts here and there done when needed. Thanks again!

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Re^3: Delete all but the most recent backup file by Kenosis (Priest) on Jan 27, 2013 at 23:12 UTC
You're most welcome! Yes, Komodo appears to just be alerting you about `<DATA>`, but should certainly know better, since there's a `__DATA__` section. Try the following: `use strict; use warnings; use File::stat; chomp( my @fileNames = <*.bak> ); my @sortedFileNames = map $_->[0], sort { $b->[1] <=> $a->[1] } map { my $stat = stat $_; [ $_, $stat->mtime ] } grep /^backup_\d\d_\d\d_\d{4}.bak$/, @fileNames; shift @sortedFileNames; if (@sortedFileNames) { print "$_\n" for @sortedFileNames; #unlink @sortedFileNames; }` [download] This `stat`s each file for the modification time, using it in the sort. Also, note that a file `glob`'s used to read directory files...	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^4: Delete all but the most recent backup file by jagexCoder (Novice) on Jan 28, 2013 at 00:58 UTC
Hi thanks, that works great! I modified the regular expression to the file naming format that we use at work. I just noticed that the system of sorting and preserving the latest backup and deleting the rest is the most efficient - my supervisor and dad (he's a programmer) said the same thing. I don't know why I stuck with the idea of using flags, I guess it's the little mistakes the not-that-experienced programmers make. This is a good learning experience! I'll figure out the syntax related to sorting that has been implemented and understand it fully. Thanks again to both of you - take care!	[reply]
Re^5: Delete all but the most recent backup file by Anonymous Monk on Jan 28, 2013 at 02:29 UTC
Here is an alternative idea Archive the backups for a month before deleting them (like zip/7-zip) Since the files are nearly identical, it should compress really well, so in the same space you have of 24hrs of backups you can have ~20 days of backups (one zip per day), and if you combine those zip/day backups into a single archive, you'll have space for more days :)	[reply]
Re^3: Delete all but the most recent backup file by soonix (Chancellor) on Jan 27, 2013 at 20:05 UTC
I guess you'd have to replace the line `map { my ( $d, $m, $y ) = /(\d+)/g; [ $_, "$y$m$d" ] }` by something like `map {[$_, -M $_]}` However, currently I'm not often using these functions, so of course you should test it first, not that you end up keeping the oldest instead of the newest backup...	[reply] [d/l] [select]